Emin Bey, the elder of the brothers, was barely eleven years of age; and had I not seen him, I should never have been able to picture to myself any thing at all like the object on which I then looked. So extraordinary and unwieldy a being as this unhappy boy I never before met with: and I am moderate in declaring that he must have measured at least two yards round the body. His jacket of Broussa silk striped with gold, lay in large folds about his shoulders and waist; his head appeared to have been attached to his chest without the intervention of a throat; his hands, his feet, all were proportionably bulky; and when I looked at the unfortunate child, I could not help thinking how much he was to be pitied, despite the rank and riches which surrounded him. The younger boys were fine, noble-looking youths, without the slightest tendency to corpulency; but Emin Bey is the favourite of the Minister, who gratifies his every whim; and from the extreme amiability of his disposition, he is generally popular in the harem. The sons of Turkish families always inhabit the women’s apartments until they marry; when, however young they may be, they are immediately shut out; but, by an extraordinary and apparently inexplicable arrangement, they are not permitted, as soon as they have ceased to be children, to intrude themselves on the Buyuk Hanoum without her express permission, although they have free access to every other apartment in the harem. Thus Emin Bey, unless summoned by her express desire, could not visit the elder wife of his father, a venerable old person of at least seventy years of age, although he was constantly in the society of the two younger and lovelier ladies; while the other boys, yet mere children, came and went as they listed, unchidden and almost unnoticed. As soon as the Buyuk Hanoum had left the bath, we were invited to her apartment; and as I looked from the withered and feeble woman who lay stretched on the sofa before me, propped with cushions, glittering with diamonds, and busied with her chibouk, to the stately and gorgeous Georgian in all the glow of her proud youth, I had difficulty in believing that they could indeed be the wives of one man! When I had returned her salutation, and seated myself beside her, I had time to look round upon the arrangement of her apartment. On a cushion near her sofa crouched a frightful female dwarf, old, and wrinkled, and mis-shapen, with a Sycorax expression of face that made me shudder; and immediately beside her sat Devlehäi Hanoum, in a high-backed chair of crimson velvet and gilding, looking like the haughty mother of Vathek with one of her attendant spirits grovelling at her feet. A line of female slaves extended from the sofa to the door, and several others were grouped at the lower end of the saloon, which was most magnificently fitted up.