would open to
watch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they
slumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the
bey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy
hours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary
languor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamless
sleep; and there, still, were the white _yatags_ for the guests to sit
cross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the final
swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and the
cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, the
haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes,
and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and
birds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had
burned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and
mumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old
Haroun, who dozed. And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near
the overhanging latticed balcony of the facade, before me to the north
lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to
Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes
smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was
divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests,
the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse
from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and
artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the
south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly
of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers,
which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might
have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one
fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh
somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead!' waking
me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness. And I thought to myself:
'If it be not quite dead, it _will_ be soon--and with some suddenness!'
And the next morning I was at the Arsenal.

* * * * *

It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be
'the White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is
'the Black' who reigns in my soul.

G