In the course of the autumn, I beheld Constantinople, that most wonderful of landscapes, for the first time in my life.  And to begin with, the thing which struck me most were the sunsets over the huge city.  Nothing can give any idea of how magnificent they are, with the towers and thousand mosques of Stamboul standing out like a mysterious vision in the misty golden haze, an enchanted city of aerial palaces hanging in mid-air.  In those days the soft evening mists I speak of were ideal in their transparence, which no smoke ever dimmed, for the factories and steamboats which now hang their black plumes over Constantinople were then unknown.  Instead of steamers, there were only those delightful caiques, laden with brightly-dressed passengers, gliding silently along in their thousands, and leaving as it were tracks of glistening spangles in their wake.  Nothing can ever efface that sight from my recollection.

Among the caiques, which are quite peculiar to the Bosphorus, was one I met many a time, and which was indeed well known to everybody.  It belonged to a sister of the late Sultan Mahmoud, celebrated in Constantinople for her love affairs—­a sort of Marguerite de Bourbon, for whose fleeting favours several people had paid with their heads.  Three oarsmen, splendid white-skinned fellows with long fair moustaches, and athletic frames scarcely concealed beneath their white drawers and striped silk gauze shirts, sent their mistress’s caique flying through the water.  She was a tall woman, with piercing eyes and an aristocratic air—­always seated between two lovely maids of honour.  I say lovely, for the Turkish woman, when she is unobserved, when she knows her own beauty and meets eyes whose admiration she desires to rouse, always finds means of permitting her veil the most delightful if indiscreet revelations.  Consequently I was always on the look-out to try and get a sight of the Sultana’s caique.  It must be remembered I was just off a cruise after long months spent in warlike solitude on board ship.  So, though St. Sophia, with its size and its legend, had struck me as being the most profoundly devotional edifice I had ever seen—­an impression which the sight of St. Peter’s at Rome and of the Cathedral of Seville has never removed—­my attention and curiosity were much more drawn to the earthly representatives of the houris promised to the faithful, than to the monuments of the Faith.

The curiosity I speak of led me on a certain Friday to the Sweet Waters of Asia.  I found the loveliest of scenes lying before my eyes that delicious afternoon towards the end of August.  Imagine an immense meadow, broken up by clumps of trees, sloping down to the swift blue waters of the Bosphorus, on the other side of which ran wooded hills dotted with mosques and minarets and gaily painted country houses.  Close to the edge of the water stands a kiosk, and an elegantly-carved marble fountain.  And around the kiosk is a sort of promenade shaded by huge plane-trees.