At seven o’clock in the evening the school closed.  Miss K. then took her leave, and I remained sole occupant of her two rooms, which she only uses as school-rooms, for she sleeps at her brother’s house.

My lodging at Miss K.’s was, however, the most uncomfortable of any I had yet occupied during my entire journey.

From eight o’clock in the morning until seven at night four or five girls, who did any thing rather than study, were continually in the room.  The whole day long there was such a noise of shouting, screaming, and jumping about, that I could not hear the sound of my own voice.  Moreover, the higher regions of this hall of audience contained eight pigeons’ nests; and the old birds, which were so tame that they not only took the food from our plates, but stole it out of our very mouths, fluttered continually about the room, so that we were obliged to look very attentively at every chair on which we intended to sit down.  On the floor a cock was continually fighting with his three wives; and a motherly hen, with a brood of eleven hopeful ducks, cackled merrily between.  I wonder that I did not contract a squint, for I was obliged continually to look upwards and downwards lest I should cause mischief, and lest mischief should befall me.  During the night the heat and the stench were almost insupportable; and immediately after midnight the cock always began to crow, as if he earned his living by the noise he made.  I used to open the window every night to make a passage of escape for the heat and the foul air, while I lay down before the door, like Napoleon’s Mameluke, to guard the treasures entrusted to my care.  But on the second night two wandering cats had already discovered my whereabouts—­without the least compunction they stepped quietly over me into the chamber, and began to raise a murderous chase.  I instantly jumped up and drove away the robbers; and from that time forward I was obliged to remain in the interior of my fortress, carefully to barricade all the windows, and bear my torments with what fortitude I might.

Our diet was also of a very light description.  A sister-in-law of the good Pauline was accustomed to send in our dinner, which consisted one day of a thimbleful of saffron-coloured pilau, while the next would perhaps bring half the shoulder of a small fish.  Had I boarded with my hostess, I should have kept fast-day five days in the week, and have had nothing to eat on the remaining two.  I therefore at once left off dining with them, and used to cook a good German dish for myself every day.  In the morning I asked for some milk, in order to make my coffee after the German fashion.  Yet I think that some of our adulterators of milk must have penetrated even to Syria, for I found it as difficult to obtain pure goats’ milk here as to get good milk from the cow in my own country.

My bedstead was formed out of an old chest, and my sole employment and amusement was idling.  I had not a book to read, no table to write on; and if I once really succeeded in getting something to read or made an attempt at writing, the whole tribe of youngsters would come clustering round, staring at my book or at my paper.  It would certainly have been useless to complain, but yet I could not always entirely conceal the annoyance I felt.