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A Representative of gallantry has no reason to envy either the authority of the Grand Signor, or the licence of his seraglio he is arbiter of the fate of every woman that pleases him; and, it is supposed, that many a fair captive has owed her liberty to her charms, and that the philosophy of a French husband has sometimes opened the doors of his prison.
Nature had made him a monster that he might remain a man; he was born triorchis, and as only two of the seminal glands had been destroyed the remaining one was sufficient to endow him with virility. When I got back to my small seraglio I supped merrily with the five nymphs, and spent a delicious night with Victoire, who was overjoyed at having made my conquest.
Where are my slaves? Where are the guards of the seraglio?"
The stranger then rode up to the fair Urad, whom viewing, he cried out, "By Allah! thou art worthy of the seraglio of the Vizier Mussapulta: take her, my eunuchs, behind you, and bear her through the forest of Bagdad, to the home of my ancestors." The eunuchs obeyed, and bore her away, though Urad dropped her corn upon the ground; but still she trusted in the help of Houadir.
With a shout of joy the people pressed towards the mosque in their thousands, crowding all the streets and all the house-tops between the mosque and the Seraglio.
You might see better, it seemed to me, at a country inn stable on any market-day. The kitchens are the most sublime part of the Seraglio. There are nine of these great halls, for all ranks, from His Highness downwards, where many hecatombs are roasted daily, according to the accounts, and where cooking goes on with a savage Homeric grandeur.
I made the attempt, and a couple of Turkish beadles looked on very good-naturedly for some time at the progress of the drawing; but a good number of other spectators speedily joined them, and made a crowd, which is not permitted, it would seem, in the Seraglio; so I was told to pack up my portfolio, and remove the cause of the disturbance, and lost my drawing of the Ottoman Porte.
Enlightened, cultivated, a friend of the arts, a scholar and diplomatist, he seems, unlike many Orientals, to have selected the best in assimilating European influences. Yet when I looked at the tiny creature watching him with those anxious joyless eyes I felt once more the abyss that slavery and the seraglio put between the most Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life.
But of all the striking edifices at Constantinople, that of the Sultan's Palace, or seraglio, is the most spacious and the most magnificent.
Her luxurious form, her blonde complexion, her silken hair, would have all become the languishing Sultana; but then her eyes, they banished all idea of the Seraglio, and were the most decidedly European, though the most brilliant that ever glanced; eagles might have proved their young at them.
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