“I thought,” I said to him, “that I had Zelmi before me.”

“That would have been too much against our established rules.  What I have done is not much, but I do not know an honest man who would be bold enough to bring his daughter into the presence of a stranger.”

“I think your wife must be handsome; is 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.