On our way home we visited a Turkish Coffee house. We entered a paved courtyard with a fountain basin in the middle, surrounded by big yellow flowers. The customers were sitting around the basin on low cushions; some of them were sipping their coffee and others smoked their narghile, passing it by turns from neighbour to neighbour. Thus occupied, the Turkish smokers pondered meditatively, whilst the Greeks and the Armenians argued about their commercial affairs. This coffee-house consists of several lofty rooms. In one of them the proprietor was sitting proudly behind his bar; a quantity of narghiles of all dimensions, richly adorned with gold and silver ornaments, lay in rows on the shelves fixed all around the wall. In the next room a barber worked, shaving a greater number of skulls than beards. May 5th.—A Russian employer has been insulted this morning by an individual serving in the Persian Consulate, who called him a lot of bad names. The man came to complain to my husband just when the Persian Consul was announced. The culpable Persian was speedily sent for and brought in under the escort of a Russian gendarme and a Turkish kavass. The interview was not pleasant. Sergy told the Persian that it was only out of regard to his Consul that a severe punishment was not imposed upon him by the Russian authorities; he was handed over entirely to the discretion of his Consul. May 8th.—Yesterday we went to a ball given at the Casino, the building of the ancient “seraglio,” where all the festivities were organised before, being now transformed into a hospital for the Turkish wounded soldiers. This ball was to be a grand affair, the arrangements were splendid; the ball-room was fitted up as a big Turkish tent, decorated with plants and flowers. I had to sign a large packet of invitations for that ball, printed on gilt-edged paper, which indicated a long sojourn in the shop by its yellowish colour. This ball sowed discord in many Armenian families; the fair sex wanted to assist at it but the unfair protested energetically. Bulerian, one of the richest Armenians of Erzeroum, had proclaimed publicly that his compatriots who dared to conduct their families to that ball would have to pay dearly for it when Erzeroum was given back to the Turks. Bulerian was responsible for his reckless speech; after having been smartly lectured for it, he has undergone the most infamous Asiatic punishment, which was, being forbidden to mount his horse for a whole month.