Now, however, I derived most encouragement from the idea, that I was completely transformed in mind, as well as in appearance; that the thread of my former life was wholly broken, so that I could look on its adventures as on transactions foreign to myself, which I had now done with for ever. I had entered on a new state of existence, wherein, if recollections still haunted me, these would every day become fainter and fainter, until at last they wore out, and perished altogether. When I looked out from the window, the tumult of people, the uninterrupted noise of business which was kept up upon the streets--all was new to me, and was exactly calculated to prolong that levity of mind, which the loquacity of the little man, and my being forced to laugh at him, had excited. In my new dress I ventured down to the crowded _table d'hote_, and all apprehension vanished, when I found that no one observed me, nay, that even my nearest neighbour did not give himself the trouble of looking at me when I set myself beside him. In the list of strangers, I had entered my name simply as Mr Leonard, and given myself out for a _particulier_, who travelled for his own pleasure. Of such travellers there might be many in the town, and of course I would escape farther questioning. After dinner, it afforded me a new and incalculable pleasure to wander through the town, where I found streets much broader and better paved, with far finer houses, than any to which I had yet been accustomed. Luckily there were now preparations set on foot for the approaching great yearly fair, which caused an unusual bustle in every quarter; and I had been told at my hotel that a few days later it would have been impossible for me to obtain lodgings. The richness of the booths, which already began to open, exceeded all that my imagination had ever conceived. _There_ were the _choicest_ goods from all quarters of the globe; from France, Italy, England, the East and West Indies; from Persia, Turkey, Russia, down to the nearer kingdoms of Hungary and Poland; and I became confirmed in my conviction that here no one would observe my dress or appearance, since there were natives of all countries, in their proper costumes, parading the streets, or arranging their merchandize. The air was perfumed by the fragrance of Turkish tobacco, as the natives of Constantinople stalked silently about with their long pipes, in dresses which I had till then only seen in books; and there were Persians, who, from their splendour of attire, might have passed for sultans, had not their present occupations proved the contrary.