Although, as I have said, her rooms were next to his own, Muzaffr-ed-Din saw comparatively little of her; he had not the time; his days were too full of engagements. Rising very early in the morning, he devoted long hours to his toilet, to his prayers and to his political conversations with the grand vizier. He worked as little as possible, but saw many people; he liked giving audiences to doctors and purveyors. He always had his meals alone, in accordance with Persian etiquette, and was served at one time with European dishes, which were better suited to his impaired digestive organs, and at another with Persian fare, consisting of slices of Ispahan melon, with white and flavoursome flesh; of the national dish called _pilaf tiobab_, in which meat cut up and mixed with delicate spices lay spread on a bed of rice just scalded, underdone and crisp; of hard-boiled eggs and young marrows; or else of _stilo_ grill, represented by scallops of mutton soaked in aromatic vinegar and cooked over a slow fire of pinewood embers; lastly, of aubergine fritters, of which he was very fond. I am bound, for that matter, to say that Persian cooking, which I had many opportunities of tasting, is delicious and that the dishes which I have named would have done honour to any Parisian bill of fare. After rising from table, Muzaffr-ed-Din generally devoted an hour to taking a nap, after which we went out either for a drive round the Bois or to go and see the shops or the Paris sights. To tell the truth, we hardly ever knew beforehand what the sovereign's plans were. He seemed to take a mischievous delight in altering the afternoon programme and route which I had worked out with his approval in the morning. Thanks to his whims, I lived in a constant state of alarm. "I want to see some museums to-day," he would say at eleven o'clock. "We will start at two." I at once informed the minister of fine-arts, who told off his officials to receive him; I telephoned to the military governor of Paris to send an escort. At three o'clock, we were still waiting. At last, just about four, he appeared, with a look of indifference and care on his face, and told me that he would much prefer to go for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne. One day, after he had spent the morning in listening to a chapter of the life of Napoleon I, he beckoned to me on his way to lunch. "M. Paoli," he said, "I want to go to the Château de Fontainebleau to-day." "Well, Sir, you see." "Quick, quick!" There was no arguing the matter. I rushed to the telephone, warned the panic-stricken P. L. M. Co., that we must have a special train at all costs and informed the keeper of the palace and the dumb-foundered sub-prefect of our imminent arrival at Fontainebleau.