ite, and that the
human soul soars into regions so sublime that the blisses of this world
below cannot satisfy it?... I did not want to quit the harem without
having also seen Hadidje, Zouhra, and Nazli. Poor little dears, no doubt
they already fancied themselves disdained! I must dry up their tears.

You will understand by this time the complications in my uncle's will
which have prevented me, these four months past, from finding a minute
to write to you.

I will relate to you the incidents of this remarkable situation, of this
quadruple passion by which I am possessed to such an extent that I am
sincere in all my professions. You may tell me, if you like, from the
commonplace standpoint of your own limited experiences, that it is all
madness. I love, I adore, after the manner of a poet or a pagan--as you
like, in fact--but what does it all amount to? My uncle, who was a
Mussulman, leaves me his harem; what could I do?

If it should happen that your work leaves you a little leisure, _don't_
come to Ferouzat; you understand? That's what we sultans are like! The
girls are dying to see Paris; very likely I shall turn up there one of
these days.

I need hardly impress upon you, I suppose, the advisability of keeping
this letter most carefully from the eyes of your wife.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

Madam, let me be very candid; I have a warm temperament, certainly--more
so, perhaps, than an ordinary Provencal. I will confess to even more
than this, if your grace so wills it, and I will not blush for it; but
pray condescend to believe that I am also a respecter of conventional
proprieties, and that I should feel most keenly the loss of your esteem
in this regard. Now, from a few words of satirical wit, concealed like
small serpents under the flowery condolences of your malicious letter, I
concluded that this miserable fellow Louis, abandoning all
considerations of delicacy, and at the risk of ruining my reputation,
had played me a most abominable trick, by reading out to you all the
nonsense which I wrote to him last week. You need not deny it! He
confesses it to-day, unblushingly, in the budget of news which he sends
me, adding that you "laughed over it." Good gracious! what can you have
thought of me? After such a story, I certainly could never again look
you in the face, but that I can clear myself by assuring you at once
that all this tale was nothing but a mystification, invented as a