red mullet,
tomato farcie, quail, and cutlet. It was a charming menu--for once:
but when we had gone on with it for a week my travelling companions and
myself grew a little weary of it, and would fain have found a change.
Poor Campbell--Schipka Campbell we called him afterwards--had arrived
with an earlier boatload of adventurers and was staying at the Hotel de
Misserie. Captain Tiburce Morrisot, of the Troisieme Chasseurs, stayed
at the Byzance; and we three made a party together to dine at Valori's
and to escape the eternal red mullet, tomato farcie, and quail.

We found there an astonishing German waiter who seemed, more or less,
to speak every language under heaven. There were in the cafe Greeks,
Italians, Spaniards, Turks, Bulgars, Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen,
and people, for aught I know, of half a dozen other nationalities; and
the head waiter addressed each and all of these in turn in any language
which might be addressed to him. One of us asked him with how many
tongues he was familiar, and he answered, with an apologetic aspect,
'Onily twelf.' What could we have for dinner? 'Fery good dinner,
gentlemen. There is red mullet, there is tomato farcie, there is qvail,'
We elected finally to dine on something which was announced as roast
beef and looked suspiciously like horse. Anything was better than that
eternal round of delicacies which had grown to be so tiresome. The
city was in a state of siege, and every ramble along the street was
productive of interest and amusement--sometimes of a rather striking
sort. I had only been there some three or four days when, in the course
of a morning stroll, I found myself in front of the Wallach Serai. The
footpaths were lined pretty thickly with loungers who had stood to watch
the march-past of a regiment of Zeibecks. The bare-legged ruffians, with
their amazing beehive hats and their swagging belly-bands crammed
with the antique weapons with which their ancestors had stormed Genoa,
straggled past in any kind of order they chose to adopt and made their
way towards the Sweet Waters of Europe, by whose shores they were
destined to encamp. When they were all gone and the stagnant tide of
passage was revived there came by an old Hoja, a holy man, dressed in
green robe and caftan and wearing yellow slippers--self-proclaimed as
one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He was followed by a very
small donkey laden with panniers. By my side on the footwalk stood a
Circassian