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Updated: June 4, 2025


Tatiana Markovna's household was full of stir and bustle. The horses were being harnessed to the caleche and to an old fashioned carriage. The coachmen, already drunk, donned their new dark blue caftans, and their hair shone with grease.

Cingalese, Kanditons, Tamils from South India, and Moormen, with crimson caftans and shaven crowns, form the bulk of the crowds that throng its streets; but, besides these, there are Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees, Englishmen, Malays, Dutchmen, and half-caste burghers, and now and then a veiled Arabian woman, or a Veddah, one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the island.

While walking with her to the tent, he tells her of the splendid caftans, the golden vessels, the jewelled daggers, and the costly arms, that he has already gathered from the field of battle. In the mean while the two men have approached each other. Now they stand face to face, Osman Bey Bardissi, and the sarechsme, Mohammed Ali, and regard each other with a long, gloomy look.

"But there is no doubt those fellows do look wonderfully imposing with their fur caps and their long blue caftans and red sashes and those splendid beards. They remind me of pictures of Neptune. Certainly I never saw such beards in England."

Around the catafalque stood the members of her household: the servants in black caftans, with armorial ribbons upon their shoulders, and candles in their hands; the relatives children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in deep mourning. Nobody wept; tears would have been une affectation.

The men came with their long caftans, the women with their black silk robes, their prettiest wigs, and strings of pearls; and one and all brought presents, tokens of their esteem. Naturally, Mendel was the centre of attraction. His present, past and future were discussed. A brilliant career was predicted for him, and he was held up as a model to his juniors.

"Who ever saw the like!" he exclaimed; and the old man rejoiced, and began to thank all the Oumantzi for the honour they had conferred upon his son. The Cossacks retired, preparing to go into camp; but the Lyakhs showed themselves again on the city ramparts with tattered mantles. Many rich caftans were spotted with blood, and dust covered the brazen helmets.

That morning three men, without either caftans or robes, but very much resembling the blacklegs of the day in their attire and deportment, had left the Tuileries at daylight with a bag and a bundle, and returned no more. They were Riza Bey and his last body-guard; the bag and the bundle were the smallest in bulk but the most precious in value of a month's successful plunder.

They represented groups of plump provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions, were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs.

They were dark-complexioned, short, dressed in Jewish-like yellow caftans, red caps and very wide trousers. They stopped in the doorway and touched their fingers to their foreheads, to their mouths, and then to their chests; then they bowed to the ground. "Who are these devils?" asked Macko. "Who are you?" "Your slaves," answered the newcomers in broken Polish. "For what reason? Where from?

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