I leave the train, cross a garden, look around me.  I am alone.  The travelers who were with me disappear here and there; I still hear the noise of a carriage which is rolling off; then all is quiet.  It is midday, the sky is very clear, and the air suffocating.  I see two white houses; it is the opening of a street; I enter and go on.  The street is narrow, the houses as small as the little villas on the slopes of artificial gardens, almost all one story in height, with windows a few feet from the ground, the roofs so low that one could almost touch them with a stick, and the walls very white.  The street turns; I look, see no one, and hear neither step nor voice.  I say to myself:—­“This must be an abandoned street!” and try another one, in which the houses are white, the windows closed, and there is nothing but silence and solitude around me.  “Why, where am I?” I ask myself.  I go on; the street, which is so narrow that a carriage could not pass, begins to wind; on the right and left I see other deserted streets, white houses, and closed windows.  My step resounds as if in a corridor.  The whiteness of the walls is so vivid that even the reflection is trying, and I am obliged to walk with my eyes half closed, for it really seems as if I were making my way through the snow.  I reach a small square; everything is closed, and no one is to be seen.  At this point a vague feeling of melancholy seizes me, such as I have never experienced before; a mixture of pleasure and sadness, similar to that which comes to children when, after a long run, they reach a lonely rural spot and rejoice in their discovery, but with a certain trepidation lest they should be too far from home.  Above many roofs rise the palm-trees of inner gardens.  Oh, fantastic legends of Odalisk and Caliph!  On I go from street to street, and square to square; I begin to meet some people, but they pass and disappear like phantoms.  All the streets resemble each other; the houses have only three or four windows; and not a spot, scrawl, or crack is to be seen on the walls, which are as smooth and white as a sheet of paper.  From time to time I hear a whisper behind a blind, and see, almost at the same moment, a dark head, with a flower in the hair, appear and disappear.  I look in at a door....

A patio! How shall I describe a patio? It is not a court, nor a garden, nor a room; but it is all three things combined.  Between the patio and the street there is a vestibule.  On the four sides of the patio rise slender columns, which support, up to a level with the first floor, a species of gallery inclosed in glass; above the gallery is stretched a canvas, which shades the court.  The vestibule is paved with marble, the door flanked by columns, surmounted by bas-reliefs, and closed by a slender iron gate of graceful design.  At the end of the patio there is a fountain; and all around are scattered chairs, work-tables, pictures, and vases of flowers.  I run to another door:  there is another patio,