sion of some gorgeous
palace interior, of

"Carven cedarn doors,
Flung inward over spangled floors,
Broad based flights of marble stairs,
Run up with golden balustrade."

When Madame de Hell visited the East, it was considered dangerous for
Franks to venture into the streets of Constantinople, and they occupied
only the suburbs of Pera and Galata, which were exclusively made over to
the Christian population, and separated from the Mussulman city by the
arm of the sea known as the Golden Horn. And as in those days, which
were long before the introduction of Mr. Cook's "personally conducted
tours," tourists were few, the presence of a "giaour" in the Mohammedan
quarter was an extraordinary event. Those who should have fallen in with
our two young adventurers, their eager gaze roving everywhere in quest
of new discoveries, strolling hither and thither like two children out
for a holiday, would never for one moment have supposed that a terrible
pestilence was raging through the city, and nowhere more fatally than in
the very districts they had chosen for their explorations. But perhaps
the danger from disease was not so imminent as the peril they incurred
in penetrating into the chosen territory of Islam. Fortune favoured
them, however, or their frank bearing disarmed fanaticism, and they
escaped without molestation or even insult.

As Monsieur and Madame de Hell resided for a year in Constantinople, it
is needless to say they remained long enough for the glamour to
disappear, in which at first their lively imaginations had invested
everything around them. The gorgeous visions vanished, and their eyes
were opened to the hard realities of Mohammedan ignorance, bigotry and
misgovernment. They learned, perhaps, that the order and freedom of
Western civilization are infinitely more valuable than the
picturesqueness of Oriental society. In 1838 they set out for Odessa,
where Monsieur de Hell hoped to obtain a position worthy of his talents.
The future of the young couple rested wholly on a letter of
recommendation to General Potier, by whom they were warmly welcomed. The
general, who owned a large estate in the neighbourhood, where he
cultivated a famous breed of Merino sheep, had formed a project for
erecting mills upon the Dnieper. To carry it out he needed an engineer,
and in M. Hommaire de Hell he found one. Straightway they proceeded to
his estate at Kherson, and M. de Hell set to work on the nec