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Updated: June 13, 2025
On the walls there was a lamentable medley of landscapes in dim and gaudy colors, painted in Canton or Hongkong, mingled with tawdry chromos of odalisks, half-nude women, effeminate lithographs of Christ, the deaths of the just and of the sinners made by Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries.
Then she buried the point of her golden spurs in the flank of her steed, and urged it towards the spot where the most frantic of the mænads stood fighting with the mounted odalisks, tearing some from their horses, rending their clothes, and then by way of mockery remounting them with their faces to the horses' tails.
In the centre of this saloon, then, was a large fountain, whence fragrant rose-water ascended into the air sporting with the golden balls. Along the whole length of the walls were immense Venetian mirrors, in which splendid odalisks admired their own shapely limbs.
In a week's time it will be the Feast of Bairam, and the favourite Sultana has chosen thee from among the other odalisks as a gift for the Padishah. Rejoice, therefore, I say. But Irene at these words would fain have died.
The half a thousand odalisks and the four hundred eunuchs occupied the whole width of the road, but face to face with them were advancing ten thousand intoxicated viragoes led by the frantic bayaderes. "Make way for the Sultana!" cried the running eunuchs to the approaching crowd, "make way for the Sultana and her suite!" The execution of this command bordered on the impossible.
Suddenly the Sultana stood amongst them with a haughty, commanding look, like a demi-goddess. "Who is the presumptuous wretch who would bar the way before me?" she cried in her clear, penetrating voice. One of the odalisks planted herself in front of the Sultana and, resting one hand upon her hip, pointed with the other at Gül-Bejáze!
"The Italians are remarkable for that lassitude which distinguishes the eastern nations; but there are no men more active and persevering when once their passions are excited. These very women, too, whom you behold as indolent as the odalisks of a seraglio, upon some occasions give most striking proofs of attachment.
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