The
mansion was large, I having to traverse quite a desert of embroidered
brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa silks, till I saw a
stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna _portiere_, went up, and wandered
some time in a house of gilt-barred windows, with very little furniture,
but palatial spaces, solitary huge pieces of _faience_ of inestimable
age, and arms, my footfalls quite stifled in the Persian carpeting. I
passed through a covered-in hanging-gallery, with one window-grating
overlooking an inner court, and by this entered the harem, which
declared itself by a greater luxury, bric-a-bracerie, and profusion of
manner. Here, descending a short curved stair behind a _portiere_, I
came into a marble-paved sort of larder, in which was an old negress in
blue dress, her hair still adhering, and an infinite supply of
sweetmeats, French preserved foods, sherbets, wines, and so on. I put a
number of things into a pannier, went up again, found some of those
exquisite pale cigarettes which drunken in the hollow of an emerald,
also a jewelled two-yard-long chibouque, and tembaki: and with all
descended by another stair, and laid them on the steps of a little
raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again,
and brought down a still-snowy _yatag_ to sleep on; and there, by the
kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a
state of languor.
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