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Updated: June 17, 2025
The ideal of girls like Zouhra, Nazli, Hadidjé, and Kondjé-Gul, is the life which I am now giving them; they abandon themselves to it, as to the realisation of their hopes. Their notions respecting the destiny of woman do not go beyond this happiness, which they now possess, of pleasing their master and being loved in this way by him.
They have all of them got to know a great deal more than was necessary for them about those famous "customs of our harems in France," the principles of which I had endeavoured to teach them. Thus I even noticed the other day that I set Zouhra and Nazli laughing when I reminded them of some point of etiquette.
Apprehending some skirmishing between my two jealous houris, I rushed off, followed at a distance by Zouhra and Nazli, who were frightened at the thought of being left alone. As I entered the harem I found Hadidjé and Kondjé-Gul, with their hair dishevelled and their clothes torn, struggling together.
It was really impossible for me to show such contempt for fas and nefas as I should do were I to reward her assault upon Hadidjé in such an extraordinary fashion as by pardoning her. What in the world would Zouhra and Nazli say? It would be all over with my authority and my reputation.
At this question she raised her head with an inexpressible languor and smiled again, looking into my eyes, and so close that our lips met. Louis, is it true that the ideal embraces the infinite, and that the human soul soars into regions so sublime that the blisses of this world below cannot satisfy it?... I did not want to quit the harem without having also seen Hadidjé, Zouhra, and Nazli.
As we had decided, Kondjé-Gul has been separated from her over-jealous companions. Hadidjé, Zouhra, and Nazli have taken this measure to be a confirmation of her disgrace, and knowing that she lives in a sequestered corner of the house, they fancy their triumph more assumed than ever.
The other evening, I was in the harem, and Nazli and Zouhra were playing Turkish airs on the zither, while Hadidjé, seated at my feet, with her head resting upon her hands, which were crossed on my knees, was singing in a low murmur the words of each tune.
It is no use, therefore, for you to string together a lot of conventional abstractions with a view to drawing from them any deductions applicable to the laws of the Kingdom of Love. The truth is that Hadidjé, Nazli, and Zouhra burst into transports of joy when Kondjé-Gul repeated to them my promise to be "faithful to all four of them."
He kept looking at me from the corner of his eye with a furious expression. As soon as I could escape, I ran off to El-Nouzha to question Mohammed about what had happened in the harem. He related the whole scene to me in detail. Nazli, Hadidjé, and Zouhra were alone when he went to prepare them for my aunt's visit. As Koudjé-Gul was reading in her room, she had not been informed of it.
All this, without my being any longer surprised by it, kept me in a sort of happy contentment, like that of a well satisfied vizir, which defies all analysis, but which you will understand. All at once the music ceased. "André," said Hadidjé to me, "won't you come into the garden for a little while?" "Come along!" I replied, and rose up to go. She took my arm. Zouhra and Nazli followed us.
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