ts immobility can brave a lapse of time which
would prove fatal to the likeness of any portraiture of European
society. The following sketch, for instance, is likely to be as true
now, as when it was written:--

"After three months' stay at Teheran, I was heartily tired of it and of
Persia altogether. The manner of living is fearfully monotonous. A
stranger, debarred from female society, and deprived of all the
diversions of European cities, can scarcely find employment for his day.
I had hired for six _toumans_ a month (the touman is worth about ten
shillings) one of the prettiest houses of the town in the quarter named
Gazbine-Dervaze. The air, it is true, circulated as freely through it as
in the open street, but the climate is so mild and the weather was so
fine that this could scarcely be considered an objection. The house
consisted of two stories of several rooms with two terraces to each.
Those of the upper story overlooked the town, which, in spite of its
dulness, had a certain air of activity. Two rows of windows--the lower
closed with wooden shutters and the upper one formed of colored
glass,--gave light to the principal room, of which the walls were white
as snow. I took advantage of two niches to place therein two complete
Persian armors which I had procured with inconceivable trouble, for no
one can imagine the numberless and tedious difficulties which impede
every kind of transaction. For the most trifling purchase one hundred
toumans are spoken of as a hundred roubles in Russia. Besides,
punctuality is a virtue unknown in Persia, and this alone would suffice
to make the country odious to foreigners. If you charge a tradesman with
want of faith, he replies gravely that 'his nose has burned with
regret'--a strange expression of repentance certainly! Indeed, the habit
of falsehood is so inveterate among Persians of this class--and I may
even say of all classes--that when they happen by chance to keep their
word they never fail to claim a reward as though they had performed a
most rare and meritorious act. Having examined all the rare but rather
heterogeneous articles which compose the royal treasury, we went to see
the king's second son (the eldest was at Tauris), to whom Count
Simonitsch had to pay a farewell visit. We found the little prince in
the audience chamber, seated on the floor on a cachmere, and propped by
several large bolsters covered with pink muslin. He was a delicate
sickly child of four or f