not recommend. But at last I
was told of a mattress which an old woman next door was possessed of,
and which she sometimes let out to strangers; and in an evil hour I sent
for it. That treacherous bed and its clean white coverlet will never be
forgotten by me. I laid down upon it and in one minute was fast
asleep--the next I started up a perfect Marsyas. Never until that day
had I any idea of what fleas could do. So simultaneous and well
conducted was their attack that I was bitten all over from top to toe at
the first assault. They evidently were delighted at the unexpected
change of diet from a grim, skinny old woman to a well-fed traveller
fresh from the table of the embassy. I examined the white coverlet--it
was actually brown with fleas. I threw away my clothes, and taking
desperate measures to get rid of some myriads of my assailants, I ran
out of the room and put on a dressing-gown in the outer hall, at the
window of which I sat down to cool the fever of my blood. I half
expected to see the fleas open the door and march in after me, as the
rats did after Bishop Hatto on his island in the Rhine; but fortunately
the villains did not venture to leave their mattress. There I sat,
fanning myself in the night air and bathing my face and limbs in water
till the sun rose, when with a doleful countenance I asked my way to a
bath. I found one, and went into the hot inner room with nothing on but
a towel round my waist and one on my head, as the custom is. There was
no one else there, and when the bath man came in he started back with
horror, for he thought I had got that most deadly kind of plague which
breaks out in an eruption and carries off the patient in a few hours.
When it was explained to him how I had fallen into the clutches of these
Lemnian fleas, he proceeded to rub me and soap me according to the
Turkish fashion, and wonderfully soothing and comforting it was.

As there was a rumour of pirates in these seas, the little brig would
not sail till night, and I passed the day dozing in the shade out of
doors; when evening came I crept down to the port, went on board, and
curled myself up in the hole of a cabin among ropes and sails, and went
to sleep at once, and did not wake again till we arrived within a short
distance of the most magnificent mountain imaginable, rising in a peak
of white marble ten thousand feet straight out of the sea. It was a
lovely fresh morning, so I stood with half of my body out of the
h