"After three months' stay at Teheran, I was heartily tired of it and of Persia altogether. The manner of living is fearfully monotonous. A stranger, debarred from female society, and deprived of all the diversions of European cities, can scarcely find employment for his day. I had hired for six _toumans_ a month (the touman is worth about ten shillings) one of the prettiest houses of the town in the quarter named Gazbine-Dervaze. The air, it is true, circulated as freely through it as in the open street, but the climate is so mild and the weather was so fine that this could scarcely be considered an objection. The house consisted of two stories of several rooms with two terraces to each. Those of the upper story overlooked the town, which, in spite of its dulness, had a certain air of activity. Two rows of windows--the lower closed with wooden shutters and the upper one formed of colored glass,--gave light to the principal room, of which the walls were white as snow. I took advantage of two niches to place therein two complete Persian armors which I had procured with inconceivable trouble, for no one can imagine the numberless and tedious difficulties which impede every kind of transaction. For the most trifling purchase one hundred toumans are spoken of as a hundred roubles in Russia. Besides, punctuality is a virtue unknown in Persia, and this alone would suffice to make the country odious to foreigners. If you charge a tradesman with want of faith, he replies gravely that 'his nose has burned with regret'--a strange expression of repentance certainly! Indeed, the habit of falsehood is so inveterate among Persians of this class--and I may even say of all classes--that when they happen by chance to keep their word they never fail to claim a reward as though they had performed a most rare and meritorious act. Having examined all the rare but rather heterogeneous articles which compose the royal treasury, we went to see the king's second son (the eldest was at Tauris), to whom Count Simonitsch had to pay a farewell visit. We found the little prince in the audience chamber, seated on the floor on a cachmere, and propped by several large bolsters covered with pink muslin. He was a delicate sickly child of four or five years old, with an unmeaning countenance, a pale face, insignificant and rather flattened features, and red hair, or rather, I should say, with his hair dyed of a deep red. He was dressed in a shawl caftan lined with fur, and wore on his little black cap a diamond aigrette. We sat down in front of him on the carpet;--Mirza-Massoud, the minister for foreign affairs, and two or three other dignitaries who were present at the interview, remained standing. _Demahi schouma tschogh est?_ that is to say, 'Is your nose very fat?' inquired Count Simonitsch. This extraordinary form of speech universally used by well-bred persons in Persia, seems to indicate that they ascribe considerable hygienic importance to that feature. All my