I have just been reading Pierre Loti's last book, "Les Désenchantées," and have been charmed with it, recalling as it does to my mind so many interesting days spent in Constantinople -the poetic home of the unhappy trio, Zeyneb, Melek, and Djénane, whom I knew well, and whose friendship I enjoyed in spite of the fact that Loti, for obvious reasons, would have us believe them to be creatures of his imagination only.

"Les Désenchantées" is in many respects a masterly presentment of facts concerning the daily life of upper-class women in Turkey-facts which, difficult though it must have been, he undoubtedly acquired first-hand from themselves, and round which he has twined a romance of very human interest. The picture he gives us of their "soul-life" is wonderfully faithful, sad as it is. That he contrived a considerable amount of personal intercourse with some of them, outside the harem walls, is proved by the following passage in a letter from Sadié, which, at the time of receiving, I had no idea referred to Loti, but which, in the light of his subsequent book, would certainly appear to do so: L

"Those who tell you that Turkish women are by force of circumstance necessarily virtuous mislead you, dear friend, for Turkish women are at least in so far like others of their sex, that the bars do not exist strong enough to cage them when they are really minded to be free. At this very moment I could tell you of a young widow, a relation of ours, who is car

All the letters quoted are translations from the French, in which the originals were received.

rying on a most amusing flirtation with a foreigner, a well-known author. She contrives to meet him at some place or another on the Bosphorus, in the woods, or in a mosque-almost daily; and although their friendship is platonic, and designed only to furnish him with first-hand 'copy' for a novel he is writing, she gets an immense amount of amusement out of it. She has already received between fifty and sixty letters from him. From these it seems clear that, so far, she has not consented to lift her veil in his presence, for in one of his effusions he says, 'How long am I to endure this supplice de Tantale? Am I never to see your face, which I imagine as lovely as your voice is gentle?' In answer to this appeal, and with pardonable coquetry, she sent him a photograph of herself, in which, as Madame de Récamier, she reclined on a sofa, with her head turned away, and only a suggestion of a profile! N'allez pas répondre à cette lettre, chère amie, en me faisant un cours de morale, à moi petite Turque à laquelle on n'en a jamais appris. Je vous dis seulement ces choses pour vous apprendre que partout, dans tout l'univers, les femmes se ressemblent!"

Only when he comes to describe scenes in the interior of harems, which, being a man, he was ipso facto debarred from entering, does Lot! somewhat over-color his pictures, giving to them a touch of "Arabian Nights" magnificence which, in my experience, is quite foreign to them.

As an instance of this, I might quote his "Zahide's" arrival at the Palace of the Sultanah-Valldeh, when she goes there to plead for her divorce:

into the selamlik, and the men only occasionally visiting their feminine relations in the haramlik. The girls are educated as ours are, chiefly by foreign governesses. They learn all foreign languages, and speak them fluently, even amongst themselves (French for choice, as far as my experience goes), except when, out of respect for the presence of a member of the older generation, they fall back on the use of their mother-tongue. They read the classics of all countries in the original, and play Wagner and Bach on the piano. All European fiction, good and bad, they have at their finger-ends; and from this ofttimes polluted source they glean all the knowledge they have of Western customs. Many of them dabble in literature themselves, copying the style of their favorite author with a skill which is quite remarkable.

Up to the age of twelve girls are as free and untrammelled as European children, and are allowed to play with them and attend their parties. with her twelfth birthday comes the inevitable day which no Turkish

But

woman of the upper classes may hope to evade. On that day the girl becomes a woman: she adopts the tcharchaff, and joins that silent sisterhood who are condemned to see the world darkly through a veil, without having lost any of their natural desire to participate in its gaieties. Henceforth she is a prisoner in the harem, which she may not leave unveiled and unaccompanied; henceforth she is debarred from any interchange of thought with one of the opposite sex, unless he happens to be closely related to her.

No passage in Loti's book is more true than that in which he describes the contrast between mothers and daughters of the present day, and the gulf which education has fixed between them:

The Turkish woman's street garment.

Elle était d'une autre génération, parAlexandre Dumas père. Entre elle et ses filles un abîme s'était creusé de lant peu le Français, et n'ayant lu qu' deux siècles au moins, tant les choses marchent vite dans la Turquie d'aujourd'hui. Physiquement même elle ne leur ressemblait pas; ses beaux yeux reflétaient une paix un peu naïve . . . c'est qu'elle avait borné son rôle terrestre à être une tendre mère et une épouse impeccable sans en chercher plus.

I used to realize this when I visited these modern mothers and daughters in their oriental surroundings, and I remember once being particularly struck with it. I had gone to see the wife and daughter of Hamil Pasha. I found them sitting together in a room with all the doors open. Hamil Hanum was in European dress, of course, but it seemed to sit ill upon her angular figure. As she could not join in our conversation, understanding no French, she sat huddled over a mangal rolling cigarettes, which she smoked one after another. Aziyade, her daughter, was a small delicate creature, with tiny hands and feet. A mass of dark hair crowned a

pale face, out of which shone two lustrous black eyes. She was barely eighteen, but was dressed in expensive French clothes, which made her look twice her age-an effect heightened by her very quiet and sedate manner and her deliberate way of talking. She sat on the sofa beside me, her clasped hands resting in her lap, and her curious gaze fixed immovably upon my face. She told me many startling things, in an even tone of voice, expressive of strongly contained emotion. As she was shortly to be married, our talk naturally turned upon the approaching event, and I realized with horror that she had not seen her future husband, except from her window as

3A heating apparatus, a kind of charcoal stove in vogue in Turkey.