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MELANCHOLY MADNESS.

209

ing on that frightful melancholy, that must, if not dispelled, engender insanity. And my

experience of such feelings is not to be wondered at, if my position in the Harem is thoroughly examined.

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CHAPTER XII.

WELL, kind reader; there I was, totally unacquainted with either the Turkish or Arabic tongues; unaccustomed to the filthy manners, barbarous customs, and disgusting habits of all around me; deprived of every comfort by which I had always been surrounded; shut out from all rational society; hurried here and there, in the heat of a scorching African sun, at a moment's notice; absolutely living upon nothing else but dry bread and a little pigeon or mutton, barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Compelled to take all my meals but my scanty breakfast (a dry roll and cup of coffee) in the society of two clownish disgusting German peasant servants; lacking the stimulants so essentially necessary for the preservation of health in such a hot climate;

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stung almost to death with mosquitoes, tormented with flies, and surrounded with beings who were breeders of vermin; a daily witness of manners the most repugnant, nay, revolting, to the delicacy of a European female-for often have I seen, in the presence of my little Prince,

"A lady of the Harem, not more forward than all the rest,
Well versed in Syren's arts, it must be confessed,
Shuffle off her garments, and let her figure stand revealed
Like that of Venus who no charms concealed!"

Surrounded by intriguing Arab nurses, who not only despised me because I was a Howadji, but hated me in their hearts because, as a European lady, I insisted upon receiving, and most assuredly I did receive, so far as H. H. the Viceroy and their H. H. the Princesses, the three wives, were concerned, proper respect. The bare fact of my being allowed to take precedence of all the inmates of the Harem, even of the Ikbals, "favourites," galled them to the quick; and there is no doubt but they were at that time inwardly resolved to do their utmost to render my position as painful as possible, nay,

even untenable. Then my only companions

in

"These mystic halls so long from you concealed,
Whose secrets are by me at length revealed,"

were the ladies of the Harem, whose appearance I have already described as being totally at variance with that glowing myth-like picture that the prince of Irish poets, Tom Moore, gives of retired beauty, so erroneously supposed to be caged within the precincts of the Abodes of Bliss, in his exquisite poem of "Lalla Rookh," for therein I failed to find

"Oh, what a pure and sacred thing
Is beauty curtained from the sight
Of the gross world, illumining
One only mansion with her light."

They were composed of the old Ikbals, favourites of Ibrahim Pacha, and some of those who had ceased to rank as such, or, as the slaves emphatically termed it, to please the "Baba Efendimir."

I was struck with their use of the expression, "please the Viceroy," for it was one that had been used to me when I had an interview

THE LADIES OF THE HAREM.

213

in London with Mr. C. H.'s sister, prior to my leaving for Egypt, by that lady. At that time I did not heed the expression; now that the Ikbals had used it I understood their significance of its meaning, and I was perfectly convinced in my own mind that, taking it in that sense, they meant that I should not please His Highness, no matter how long I remained in the Viceregal service.

Many were very old, as no woman is ever ejected from this supposed type of the Mahometan Paradise, as poor Hagar was repudiated of old. Ah! but hereby hangs a tale-except when the "green-eyed monster," jealousy or envy, for

"Mean souls wish sorrow to the happy-minded,

And hate the sun that sweetly smiles upon content!
But when base owls and bats by mid-day blinded,
Accuse the light, is the sun into darkness sent?"

sends her to her "long account with all her imperfections on her head." When she is doomed, however, with calm resignation,

"She hears the fatal news-no word—no groan;
She speaks not, moves not, stands transfixed to stone;"

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