And we
ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose,
tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable.
The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out
to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later,
she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish
containing a mess of gorgeous colours--a boiled fish under red peppers,
bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away,
and would have none of her, or her dish.
* * * * *
About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the
deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated
internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and
portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently
descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with
long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a
large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been
either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings
graven round it, from centre to circumference.
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