Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest on laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching.  I began, of course, with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside a human head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside of a dead horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its lair.  While I was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I saw the bugler coming out.  Upon the breach; behind him marched a sub-lieutenant, sword in hand, and then in place of men, a string of donkeys, led by about a dozen Zouave irregulars.  Puzzled, I went up to the bugler and, stopping him, I asked what he was blowing for.  “Why,” he replied rocking from one foot to another with his bugle on his hip, “this is the volunteer company from Bougie going back to headquarters.”

“What?”

“Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there—­everybody killed in the assault; there is nobody left but us.”  He began blowing again.  The donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace, which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with Nemours.  As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the Tuileries on February 24th, 1848.  In one of the courtyards, planted with orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish balconies of the Bey’s Palace, there was a little door, which had been confided to the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a sergeant major of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem.  It was the door into the harem and gave access to several courts, surrounded by galleries, both on the ground floor and first story, on which opened spacious rooms carpeted with divans and cushions and with shelves all round piled with quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all, stuffs, especially silken ones.  The women—­there were over two hundred of them—­spent their lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on the cushions in these apartments.  They were divided into two categories.  The negresses, who formed the great majority, occupied two court-yards, and these courts exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the whole of the Bey’s palace, whenever the wind blew from that quarter.  The white and sallow-complexioned women all lived together, they all wore Arab dress, with more or fewer trinkets, and there were some pretty women among them.  Two were Greeks and there was one really beautiful Moorish woman, called Ayescha.  I did her likeness, and that of the chief eunuch as well.  He was a negro, growing grey, with a deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled up in very fine haiks which showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and legs which were entirely guiltless of calf.  That sitting would have been a good subject for a picture—­I drawing, the ladies of the harem hanging over me watching me work, and the negro standing and swearing as he stood, while Ayescha went to and fro lavishing the quaintest caresses on him, to keep him in good temper.