four corners of Asia, all of them worthy subjects for an artist’s pencil, and I never stopped drawing them.  Coming back to the town, which had been cooled by the sea-breeze, the “Imbat,” we used to spend our evenings in the Levantine or Armenian society of the place, amongst grandfathers who were still faithful to their old costume, wrapped in kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in half-oriental costumes.  Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c., dance the Romaika.  Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive then.  The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything.  Everywhere there are stays! and stays steal charm away!

We were young and gay at the time I speak of, and passionate too!  Two of my brother lieutenants fought a duel, much more serious than those pin-prick encounters which are now the fashion.  They fought with pistols, on the very marine promenade where they had been joking with young ladies the evening before.  Just as the seconds gave the signal to fire, the sun rose on the horizon.  Its first ray glinted on a breast button on the uniform of one principal:  the other man’s bullet, as though drawn by some fatal attraction, struck the button, and killed our unhappy comrade dead.  A midshipman carried off a charming Greek lady, who was discovered in his cabin after his ship had got out to sea.  And many another strange incident occurred!  On leaving Smyrna, the Iphigenie cruised all about the Archipelago, and along the Anatolian, Caramanian, and Syrian coasts.  Whenever I was not on duty my pencil was in my fingers, for I had the most enchanting and picturesque of models under my hand.  From Tripoli in Syria I climbed to the top of Mount Lebanon, whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec and the Desert.  We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of jokes there with a witty ship’s surgeon named Camescasse, who was one of our party.  I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice was specially among the local aristocracy.  He always called him “The Avenger of the People.”

At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest.  Apart from my presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of Boutrouss-Karam’s daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to it in their best clothes.  Such handsome types, such costumes, such turbans!  I was one of the bride’s witnesses:  she and I had each to keep a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole