we were invited into the dining-room, where a dinner of about twelve courses was served, all cooked in olive oil. The dishes were handed to our hostess first, and when she had served herself, the slaves served the guests. We ate our soup with spoons whose bowl was of tortoise-shell, and the handle of ivory tipped with coral. During the repast a band of musician-girls were seated cross-legged on the floor, playing noisily on their weird, strange-looking instruments, and making what they seemed to think was music. One of the slaves began to sing in a falsetto-voice, when suddenly there came a tap at the door and a few words in Turkish, that caused the slave-girls to jump hurriedly to their feet, drawing their veils over their faces. The door was flung open and the master of the house came in, followed by his father-in-law—an ex-Vizier. As a rule no male, except the woman’s husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law, ever pass the threshold of the privacy of a harem. At the end of the dinner a slave-girl poured rose-water over our fingers from a copper jug, wiping them with a napkin of damask, after which our hostess threw on a blue cloak and led us into the garden, laid down in terraces, with lemon and orange trees bending under the weight of their fruit. In a large pond gold fish swam, and close by was a large cage filled with canaries. We sat on a hillock, admiring the beautiful birds’ eye view of Constantinople and the Bosphorus, whilst the “Bey,” the little man-child, picked flowers for Zoe and me. Night was drawing on; it was time to bid farewell to our amiable hosts and return to the hotel. My curiosity concerning harem life was not entirely satisfied. I wanted to visit a harem containing several wives. The interpreter of our hotel, a Circassian named Michael, who spoke twelve languages, proposed to show us a harem whose Pasha kept a dozen wives. Sergy did not approve of the expedition, but I had my own way and started off with Zoe and her lady-companion in an open carriage. We drove through narrow, winding streets. While we were slowly mounting a steep slope, we saw two women, wrapped in blue veils, descending almost perpendicular flights of street-steps cut in the rock, making signs to our driver to stop. After a hurried colloquy with Michael, who sat on the box, he had the carriage stopped to take them up, and explained to us that these women were going to serve as interpreters for us in the harem, where he could not be admitted. One of them was a Servian and could jabber a little Russian, and her companion spoke English.