each other; a portico in the middle
leading to interior courts, built of enameled brick, tinted pale blue
or pale yellow, arabesques designed in gold lines on a ground of
turquoise blue, the dominant color; leaning minarets threatening to
fall and never falling, luckily for their coating of enamel, which the
intrepid traveller Madame De Ujfalvy-Bourdon, declares to be much
superior to the finest of our crackle enamels--and these are not vases
to put on a mantelpiece or on a stand, but minarets of good height.

These marvels are still in the state described by Marco Polo, the
Venetian traveler of the thirteenth century.

"Well, Monsieur Bombarnac," asked the major, "do you not admire the
square?"

"It is superb," I say.

"Yes," says the actor, "what a splendid scene it would make for a
ballet, Caroline! That mosque, with a garden alongside, and that other
one with a court--"

"You are right, Adolphe," said his wife; "but we would have to put
those towers up straight and have a few luminous fountains."

"Excellent notion, Caroline! Write us a drama, Monsieur Claudius, a
spectacle piece, with a third act in this square. As for the title--"

"Tamerlane is at once suggested!" I reply. The actor made a significant
grimace. The conqueror of Asia seemed to him to be wanting in
actuality. And leaning toward his wife, Caterna hastened to say:

"As a scene, I have seen a better at the Porte-Saint Martin, in the
_Fils de la Nuit_--"

"And I have at the Chatelet in _Michael Strogoff_."

We cannot do better than leave our comedians alone. They look at
everything from the theatrical point of view. They prefer the air gauze
and the sky-blue foliage, the branches of the stage trees, the agitated
canvas of the ocean waves, the prospectives of the drop scene, to the
sites the curtain represents, a set scene by Cambon or Rube or Jambon
to no matter what landscape; in short, they would rather have art than
nature. And I am not the man to try and change their opinions on the
subject.

As I have mentioned the name of Tamerlane, I asked Major Noltitz if we
were going to visit the tomb of the famous Tartar. The major replied
that we would see it as we returned; and our itinerary brought us in
front of the Samarkand bazaar.

The arba stopped at one of the entrances to this vast rotunda, after
taking us in and out through the old town, the houses of which consist
of only one story, and seem very comfortless.

Here is the bazaar i