the inner one, was made of the same material, and cut in precisely the same way. No socks were worn, and the shoes were not unlike ordinary slippers, with this exception, that they were turned up at the toes. On donning this picturesque attire I returned to the Hôtel d’Orient by way of the narrow and filthy bazaars, where my attention was attracted by a band of dancers who were drawing together a crowd of sightseers of every nationality. While one man was cutting his capers in the skin of a Polar bear, a second, tambourine in hand, powdered his face to imitate a European, while a third, got up in guise of a Negro, played with a lively monkey in chains, and three dancing girls with huge artificial moles on their faces completed the company. All these, including the monkey, pranced up and down to the tune vociferated by the women and accompanied on the tambourine by the man with the white face, repeating at intervals the shrill cry of “Hullá-hee-há-há.” As I sat within the courtyard of the Hotel, listening to the voice of the Greek prima donna who sang nightly to the assembled guests, I could not refrain from smiling within myself at the transformation in my appearance and demeanour which recalled to my memory a line of Obaid Zakani’s satire of “The Mouse and the Cat,” which runs: “Be of good cheer, comrades, the cat has become pious.” These glad tidings were spread abroad by a little mouse that, having hidden itself under the altar of a mosque at Kirmán, overheard the cat reading aloud the passage of repentance, meekly kneeling on its knees. Unfortunately the cat, the symbol of vicious cunning, broke its vows a little time after, and I wondered how far and how long I should succeed in keeping mine.