to be cut off. The
next day three more cucumbers had been stolen, upon which the gardener,
to save his own head, accused the pages of his highness of having
committed the theft. These unhappy youths were immediately sent for, and
having all declared themselves innocent, the enraged Sultan, in order to
discover the culprit, commanded them one after another to be
disembowelled. Nothing was found in the stomach or entrails of the first
six victims, but the autopsy of the seventh proved him to have been the
guilty one.

In the midst of the crowds in the Turkish capital, the women present a
curious spectacle, wandering about as they do covered with white
dominos, or rather winding-sheets. The lot of this portion of the
Mussulman population is much less unhappy than one would be led to
expect. They certainly hold a secondary station in society, but,
brought-up as they are in the most complete ignorance, they are
unconscious of their degraded position, and know not that there is a
better. They are, in general, treated very kindly by their husbands and
masters, and do not undergo, as it is supposed, either capricious or
brutal treatment. Although in Europe they still believe a Turk to be
constantly surrounded by a multitude of odalisques, to whom, as it suits
his fancy, he throws in turn his handkerchief, at Constantinople there
are very few Osmanlees who have three or even two wives, and even these
they lodge in separate mansions, in general far distant from each other.
Almost all the Turks, with the exception of the very few above mentioned
individuals, possess in general but one wife, to whom they are most
faithful. The grand seignior alone is a Sultan in the full and
voluptuous acceptation of the term. He is possessor of a magnificent
palace, where no noise from without ever penetrates, and where immense
riches have collected together all the wonders of luxury. Marble baths,
lovely gardens bounded by a sparkling sea, and vaulted by an indigo sky,
legions of slaves, who have no will but his, no law but his caprices;
and in this Eden three or four hundred women chosen from out of the most
beautiful in the universe; this is the world, this is the life of that
man: and yet, although he be so young, all who know him say that the
present Sultan is morose, sad, and splenetic.

On mounting, at sixteen, upon the throne of Turkey, Abdul Medjid
announced it to be his intention to change nothing that his father
Mahmood had establishe