But sometimes the patients proved rather interesting, particularly the females; and I was greatly amused one morning when a handsome and well- grown young person arrived with a servant of the lieutenant-governor, and entreated me to call and see her mother, who was suffering from a sore in her right ear. Thinking that her house was not far off, I followed her on foot, but had to traverse the whole town, as she was living near the gate leading to Ábú-Gher; and it caused some merriment to my friends to see me strutting along with this young lady. But afterwards, when I visited my patient, I used to mount my horse; and the daughter was always greatly delighted when I came, and frequently put some very pertinent questions to me, as to how I was going on with my household, as I was staying quite alone. She was a very handsome person, and would even have been regarded so in Europe, with the exception of her skin, the glossy black of which I thought very becoming at the time, and almost essential to female beauty. The princesses also, or the daughters of the absent king, who in this country too bear the title of “mairam” or “méram,” called upon me occasionally, under the pretext of wanting some medicines. Amongst others, there came one day a buxom young maiden, of very graceful but rather coquettish demeanour, accompanied by an elder sister, of graver manners and fuller proportions, and complained to me that she was suffering from a sore in her eyes, begging me to see what it was; but when, upon approaching her very gravely, and inspecting her eyes rather attentively without being able to discover the least defect, I told her that all was right, and that her eyes were sound and beautiful, she burst out into a roar of laughter, and repeated, in a coquettish and flippant manner, “beautiful eyes, beautiful eyes.”