n apparently paid but little
attention; but the conjuring feats delighted them; and again and again
they laughed until, literally, the head of each dropped on her
neighbor's shoulder. After a time the husband, who alone had never
appeared the least entertained, interposed, and asked the conjuror
whether he had yet discovered the guilty party. With the utmost
coolness, my friend replied, "Certainly not: how could he while His
Highness's wives continued vailed?" This new demand created new
confusion and a long debate: I thought, however, that the women seemed
rather to advocate our cause. The husband, the Mollah, and the mother
again consulted; and in another moment the vails had dropped, and the
beauty of many an Eastern nation stood before us revealed.

Four of those unvailed Orientals were, as we were informed, wives, and
six were slaves. The former were beautiful indeed, though beautiful in
different degrees and in various styles of beauty: of the latter two
only. They were, all of them, tall, slender, and dark-eyed, "shadowing
high beauty in their airy brows," and uniting a mystical with a
luxurious expression, like that of Sibyls who had been feasting with
Cleopatra. There was something to me strange as well as lovely in their
aspect--as strange as their condition, which seems a state half-way
between marriage and widowhood. They see no man except their husband;
and a visit from him (except in the case of the favorite) is a rare and
marvelous occurrence, like an eclipse of the sun. Their bearing toward
each other was that of sisters: in their movements I remarked an
extraordinary sympathy, which was the more striking on account of their
rapid transitions from the extreme of alarm to child-like wonder, and
again to boundless mirth.

The favorite wife was a Circassian, and a fairer vision it would not be
easy to see. Intellectual in expression she could hardly be called; yet
she was full of dignity, as well as of pliant grace and of sweetness.
Her large black eyes, beaming with a soft and stealthy radiance, seemed
as if they would have yielded light in the darkness; and the heavy waves
of her hair, which, in the excitement of the tumultuous scene, she
carelessly flung over her shoulders, gleamed like a mirror. Her
complexion was the most exquisite I have ever seen, its smooth and
pearly purity being tinged with a color, unlike that of flower or of
fruit, of bud or of berry, but which reminded me of the vivid and
del