About sunset the fever left me, and Salim appeared, to ask why I had not come out during the day. He quite refused to believe that there was anything the matter with me, thinking my conduct but a continuation of that of the previous evening. But I induced him to leave me alone at last, and he went away to his araq in dudgeon, and I dozed again. [Sidenote: A COFFEE-HOUSE INCIDENT] So for three days I kept in the room, creeping to the bazaar once a day to buy a piece of bread and some water-melon. The Christians, convinced that I was an unsociable fellow, shunned me, for which I was rather thankful than otherwise, and devoted their time after sunset to that form of amusement which appeared to be their only resource. The fourth day, the cold and fever were a good deal better, and I bethought me of the coffee-house where they sold warm milk, entered in there, and ordered my drink. This I consumed and paid for, when one came forward with coffee, and would have poured out some of the bitter stuff for me. When I refused he looked astonished, and retired to where the owner of the place was making the nasty beverage, holding a conversation with him, of which, to judge by the glances they cast in my direction, I must be the subject. The owner himself now came forward with coffee and poured out for me, and I again refused, at which he grew wroth. “Who are you,” he exclaimed, “that comes into a coffee-house and refuses what it serves to its customers? Either take your coffee or go.” “Why,” I replied, “I drank your milk, and paid for it, must I drink coffee as well? By what right or custom do you force your coffee down your customers’ throats?” “By the right of the owner of the coffee-house; the milk-seller is nothing to do with the coffee-house, and his customers have no right to sit in the coffee-house. Now that you have done so, you must have the coffee and pay for it.” “Never!” I replied, feeble and excessively angry; “pour your coffee in the gutters, where the filth were well left. You trap strangers in your shop by allowing them to be attracted by one of another trade, and then force them by harsh words and the bestial manners of the Turk to buy your wares.” The coffee-seller had poured out a cup of coffee and held it still towards me. With an exclamation of disgust at my stubbornness he thrust it at me, and in the annoyance of the moment I took it and flung the contents in his face and walked out of the shop, to the astonishment of several Turkish officers, who had been close by and listened to what was going on. One of these, an elderly man in the uniform of a “yuzbashi,” followed me out and caught me by the arm as he left.