world; You Christian ladies (said she, with a smile that made her as beautiful as an angel) have the reputation of inconstancy, and I did not expect, whatever goodness you expressed for me at Adrianople, that I should ever see you again.  But I am now convinced that I have really the happiness of pleasing you; and, if you knew how I speak of you amongst our ladies, you would be assured, that you do me justice in making me your friend.  She placed me in the corner of the sofa, and I spent the afternoon in her conversation, with the greatest pleasure in the world.—­The sultana Hafiten is, what one Would naturally expect to find a Turkish lady, willing to oblige, but not knowing how to go about it; and ’tis easy to see, in her manner, that she has lived excluded from the world.  But Fatima has all the politeness and good breeding of a court, with an air that inspires, at once, respect and tenderness; and now, that I understand her language, I find her wit as agreeable as her beauty.  She is very carious after the manners of other countries, and has not the partiality for her own, so common in little minds.  A Greek that I carried with me, who had never seen her before, (nor could have been admitted now, if she had not been in my train,) shewed that surprise at her beauty and manners, which is unavoidable at the first sight, and said to me in Italian,—­This is no Turkish lady, she is certainly some Christian.—­Fatima guessed she spoke of her, and asked what she said.  I would not have told her, thinking she would have been no better pleased with the compliment, than one of our court beauties to be told she had the air of a Turk; but the Greek lady told it to her; and she smiled, saying, It is not the first time I have heard so:  my mother was a Poloneze, taken at the siege of Caminiec; and my father used to rally me, saying, He believed his Christian wife had found some gallant; for that I had not the air of a Turkish girl.—­I assured her, that if all the Turkish ladies were like her, it was absolute necessary to confine them from public view, for the repose of mankind; and proceeded to tell her, what a noise such a face as hers would make in London or Paris. I can’t believe you, replied she agreeably; if beauty was so much valued in your country, as you say, they would never have suffered you to leave it.—­Perhaps, dear sister, you laugh at my vanity in repeating this compliment; but I only do it, as I think it very well turned, and give it you as an instance of the spirit of her conversation.  Her house was magnificently furnished, and very well fancied; her winter rooms being furnished with figured velvet, on gold grounds, and those for summer, with fine Indian quilting embroidered with gold.  The houses of the great Turkish ladies are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland.  This was situated in a high part of the town; and from the window of her summer apartment, we had the prospect of the sea, the islands, and the Asian mountains.—­My letter is insensibly grown so long, I am ashamed of it.  This is a very bad symptom.  ’Tis well if I don’t degenerate into a downright story-teller.  It may be, our proverb, that knowledge is no burden, may be true, as to one’s self but knowing too much, is very apt to make us troublesome to other people.  I am, &c, &c.