s she more beautiful than Zelmi?"

"My daughter's beauty is cheerful, sweet, and gentle; that of Sophia is
proud and haughty. She will be happy after my death. The man who will
marry her will find her a virgin."

I gave an account of my adventure to M. de Bonneval, somewhat
exaggerating the danger I had run in trying to raise the veil of the
handsome daughter of Scio.

"She was laughing at you," said the count, "and you ran no danger. She
felt very sorry, believe me, to have to deal with a novice like you. You
have been playing the comedy in the French fashion, when you ought to
have gone straight to the point. What on earth did you want to see her
nose for? She knew very well that she would have gained nothing by
allowing you to see her. You ought to have secured the essential point.
If I were young I would perhaps manage to give her a revenge, and to
punish my friend Yusuf. You have given that lovely woman a poor opinion
of Italian valour. The most reserved of Turkish women has no modesty
except on her face, and, with her veil over it, she knows to a certainty
that she will not blush at anything. I am certain that your beauty keeps
her face covered whenever our friend Yusuf wishes to joke with her."

"She is yet a virgin."

"Rather a difficult thing to admit, my good friend; but I know the
daughters of Scio; they have a talent for counterfeiting virginity."

Yusuf never paid me a similar compliment again, and he was quite right.

A few days after, I happened to be in the shop of an Armenian merchant,
looking at some beautiful goods, when Yusuf entered the shop and praised
my taste; but, although I had admired a great many things, I did not buy,
because I thought they were too dear. I said so to Yusuf, but he remarked
that they were, on the contrary, very cheap, and he purchased them all.
We parted company at the door, and the next morning I received all the
beautiful things he had bought; it was a delicate attention of my friend,
and to prevent my refusal of such a splendid present, he had enclosed a
note stating that, on my arrival in Corfu, he would let me know to whom
the goods were to be delivered. He had thus sent me gold and silver
filigrees from Damascus, portfolios, scarfs, belts, handkerchiefs and
pipes, the whole worth four or five hundred piasters. When I called to
thank him, I compelled him to confess that it was a present offered by
his friendship.

The day before my departure from Constantinople,