O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should write what now I write! I will not write it.... * * * * * The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair by the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will not write it! * * * * * In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in a house--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom, both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant to reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance up the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophana quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not accordingly advanced far over every sort of _débris_, when I found my eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness: whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the Foundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.'