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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Indeed," quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, "there is no room for criticism. The Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for, believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all luxuries." Here the servants entered with chibouques.
The entertainment, which commenced at one o'clock, was prolonged to an advanced period of the afternoon, and closed with coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques, in the drawing-room: the Princess and the ladies having previously withdrawn to the private apartments."
"What you say is perhaps true; they know my habits. For instance, you shall see; how do you wish to occupy yourself during tea-time?" "Ma foi, I should like to smoke." Monte Cristo took the gong and struck it once. In about the space of a second a private door opened, and Ali appeared, bringing two chibouques filled with excellent latakia. "It is quite wonderful," said Albert.
Both laid themselves down on the divan; chibouques with jasmine tubes and amber mouthpieces were within reach, and all prepared so that there was no need to smoke the same pipe twice. Each of them took one, which Ali lighted and then retired to prepare the coffee.
'Every drop of his blood, exclaimed the leader of the strange Arabs, 'is worth ten thousand piastres. Plans for Rescue THERE is Besso? said Barizy of the Tower, as the Consul Pasqualigo entered the divan of the merchant, about ten days after the departure of Tancred from Jerusalem for Mount Sinai. 'Where is Besso? I have already smoked two chibouques, and no one has entered except yourself.
The procession of the pipe, in great houses, is striking: slaves in showy dresses advancing in order, with the lighted chibouques to their mouths waving them to and fro; others bearing vases of many-coloured sherbets, and surrounding a superior domestic, who carries the strong and burning coffee in small cups of porcelain supported in frames of silver fillagree, all placed upon a gorgeous waiter covered with a mantle of white satin, stiff and shining with golden embroidery.
At that moment the black slave girl returned, bearing two little cups of coffee, while two other girls, exactly like the first, followed with two lighted chibouques, a mangál filled with coals, two small brass dishes upon which the bowls of the pipes were to rest, so as not to burn the carpet, and a little pair of steel firetongs inlaid with gold. At a sign the three slaves silently retired.
After supper we went out in the mild dark evening to a mount, where a bonfire blazed and glared on the high square tower of the convent, and cushions were laid for chibouques and coffee.
Various mustachioed far niente looking figures, wrapped cap-a-pie in dressing gowns, lolled out of the first floor corridor, and smoked their chibouques with unusual activity, while the ground floor was occupied by German washer-women and their soap-suds; three of the arcades being festooned with shirts and drawers hung up to dry, and stockings, with apertures at the toes and heels for the free circulation of the air.
And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near the overhanging latticed balcony of the façade, before me to the north lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead! waking me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness.
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