d the women and men
with their barrows of fruit and coloured notepaper and toys more
frequent. Then through the market with the booths and the church with
its golden towers, until we stood before the hooded entrance to the
Jews' Paradise. I paid him, and without listening to his discontented
cries pushed my way in. The Jews' Market is a series of covered arcades
with a square in the middle of it, and in the middle of the square a
little church with some doll-like trees. These arcades are Western in
their hideous covering of glass and the ugliness of the exterior of the
wooden shops that line them, but the crowd that throngs them is Eastern,
so that in the strange eyes and voices, the wild gestures, the laughs,
the cries, the singing, and the dancing that meets one here it is as
though a new world was suddenly born--a world offensive, dirty, voluble,
blackguardly perhaps, but intriguing, tempting, and ironical. The
arcades are generally so crowded that one can move only at a slow pace
and, on every side one is pestered by the equivalents of the old English
cry: "What do you lack? What do you lack?"

Every mixture of blood and race that the world contains is to be seen
here, but they are all--Tartars, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Indians,
Arabs, Moslem, and Christian--formed by some subtle colour of
atmosphere, so that they seem all alike to be citizens of some secret
little town, sprung to life just for a day, in the heart of this other
city. Perhaps it is the dull pale mist that the glass flings down,
perhaps it is the uncleanly dust-clogged air; whatever it be, there is a
stain of grey shadowy smoke upon all this world, and Ikons and shabby
jewels, and piles of Eastern clothes, and old brass pots, and silver,
hilted swords, and golden-tasselled Tartar coats gleam through the
shadow and wink and stare.

To-day the arcades were so crowded that I could scarcely move, and the
noise was deafening.

Many soldiers were there, looking with indulgent amusement upon the
scene, and the Jews with their skull-caps and the fat, huge-breasted
Jewish women screamed and shrieked and waved their arms like boughs in a
storm. I stopped at many shops and fingered the cheap silver toys, the
little blue and green Ikons, the buckles and beads and rosaries that
thronged the trays, but I could not find anything for Nina. Then
suddenly I saw a square box of mother-of-pearl and silver, so charming
and simple, the figures on the silver lid so grace