that between them and the sari there was a good quarter of a yard
of bare skin. The dark, bronze-coloured waists of these well-shaped
Women were boldly presented to any one's examination and reflected the
lights of the room. Their beautiful arms and their ankles were covered
with bracelets. At the least of their movements they all set up a
tinkling silvery sound, and the little sister-in-law, who might easily
be mistaken for an automaton doll, could hardly move under her load of
ornaments. The young grandmother, our hostess, had a ring in her left
nostril, which reached to the lower part of the chin. Her nose was
considerably disfigured by the weight of the gold, and we noticed how
unusually handsome she was only when she took it off to enable herself
to drink her tea with some comfort.

The dances of the nautch girls began. Two of them were very pretty.
Their dancing consisted chiefly in more or less expressive movements
of their eyes, their heads, and even their ears, in fact, of the whole
upper part of their bodies. As to their legs, they either did not move
at all or moved with such a swiftness as to appear in a cloud of mist.

After this eventful day I slept the sleep of the just.

After many nights spent in a tent, it is more than agreeable to sleep in
a regular bed, even if it is only a hanging one. The pleasure would, no
doubt, have been considerably increased had I but known I was resting on
the couch of a god. But this latter circumstance was revealed to me only
in the morning, when descending the staircase I suddenly discovered
the poor general en chef, Hanuman, deprived of his cradle and
unceremoniously stowed away under the stairs. Decidedly, the Hindus of
the nineteenth century are a degenerate and blaspheming race!

In the course of the morning we learned that this swinging throne of
his, and an ancient sofa, were the only pieces of furniture in the whole
house that could be transformed into beds.

Neither of our gentlemen had spent a comfortable night. They slept in an
empty tower that was once the altar of a decayed pagoda and was situated
behind the main building. In assigning to them this strange resting
place, the host was guided by the praiseworthy intention of protecting
them from the jackals, which freely penetrate into all the rooms of the
ground floor, as they are pierced by numberless arches and have no
door and no window frames. The jackals, however, did not trouble the
gentlemen much