They are covered sometimes with stained glass,
and sometimes with oil-paper painted of many
colours, and they serve for windows. When
these shutters are open, the room is shaded
from the sun by a prettily striped canvas awning.
There are nests of little pigeon-holes and
nooks, and shelves and corners, about the rooms,
that there is a place for everything. It is quite
a doll's house.

My palace had nearly all fallen down when I
took it; though it belonged to a prince of the
blood. But it was built up again as if by magic.
A rush of workmen appeared. They fumed
about, and halloaed to each other, and fought and
were beaten, and behold! the house rose from
its own ruins. To be sure the walls are only built
of mud and water. When the winter rain comes
they will be washed away again. About my
house are spiders, so big as to be quite bogey
spiders; and there are preposterous giants of
beetles who patrol my floors at night, and aldermen
blue-bottles, and fleas like dwarf crabs.

A man has been sent for from the city on the
day of my arrival to make my bed, which is a
laughable mass of wool in a silken sack of scarlet
and yellow. He arrives on horseback and clatters
into my room as if on an errand of life and death.
Then he sits down to talk and smoke with my
nozzir as if he had nothing to do at all.
By-and-by he sits on his knees beside an immense
instrument like a harp with one string, and takes
a large mallet of polished wood in his right
hand. Then comes my nozzir and rips open the
bed with a carving-knife, and together they beat
out the wool, lock by lock, to a pleasant kind
of music, looking as serious as children at play
the while. A tomaun is given to the bed-maker,
and he gallops away again as he came.

The roof of my house, which overlooks a wide
landscape, and is flat as a terrace, would be a
pleasant walk when the sun has gone down, and
it would be nice to dine there on these dewless
evenings, and look down upon the garden, and
confound the politics of the earwigs and spiders who
seek one's acquaintance in the gloaming. But
there are some peasants' houses about, which my
terrace commands, and I might witness a lady's
toilet; so that this would not do at all.

I have a great many servants—wonderful
people—red and blue, and yellow, and black, and
white. Their names are all from the Arabian
Nights—Hassan and Ahmed, and Ali,
Noureddin, Mohammed, and Ibrahim, Sadik and
Kerrin. My household, also, is quite patriarchal.
I call my servants "Badcha," my children; and
we are indeed of the same family. But they are
seldom at home, and their friends, also of
variegated colours, come to supply their places. It is
all the same; half a score of rice-eaters are ready
at any time to do my bidding. I might have a
dozen more if I chose, all watching my looks,
thinking me a curiosity, bragging about me as
subordinate to themselves, making good sayings
for me, and carrying them, hither and thither
about the bazaars. They take little things off my
desk or dressing-table, and show them to
astonish their friends of many hues. Sometimes
they bring them back again; sometimes they
omit this ceremony. One of them walked
about all day yesterday with a little patent
match-box, and everybody to whom he exhibited
it cried "Wonderful!" My servants are eternal
talkers, and always find such excellent reasons
for all they do, that it is impossible to catch
them tripping, and it is far better to submit to
their ways. It is also, I find, far cheaper. If
I am so extravagant as to have a difference of
opinion with any of them, he is sure to come to
me the next day and say, "Ah, Sahib! because
you broke my heart last night you must give me
a new coat." I do not find by experience that
a refusal to do so ever settles the question.

I have Aladdin's talismans, and the Slave of
the Lamp and the Slave of the Ring at my call.
Sometimes a genius with a flowing beard, and
dressed in bright-coloured silks and satins, comes
in to bring me a pretty turquoise, or a golden
bridle-chain. Perhaps I shall have to pay for
that turquoise and gold chain, if I keep them.
Perhaps they have been brought to me for sale
by a wandering trader, or some neighbour's
servant. But I prefer to think that they are
given to me by a genius as enchanted gifts, or
that they are sent to me as among the wonders
of the world by some friendly magician. A
bridle-chain which will give my horse the
fleetness of the wind, a turquoise which will render
me invisible to my enemies.

When I smoke, I seem to have an enchanted
pipe made of a living man, all blue and yellow
and gold; with a face dark and handsome, and
with humble eyes. The pipe walks away when
I have done with it, and talks if I speak. The
bowl of my pipe is of gold, enamelled round
with portraits copied from an English Book of
Beauty, which, somehow or other, found its way
to Tehran.

If I ask for food, it comes in such a tray as
the Fairy Pari-Banou might have served to
Prince Ahmed in her palace of rocks. Fragrant
wines, bright as amber, and smelling all of
flowers, in bottles of unknown shape, are upon
the tray; and large fruits, melons of great size,
and grapes in gigantic bunches freshly gathered,
with the virgin bloom upon them. Meats, too,
are there, served in tempting mouthfuls upon
silver skewers of cunning device, and snowy
flaps of bread, thin as a handkerchief, to protect
my fingers when I take the dainty morsels still
frothing from the fire. Iced sherbets and milk
curiously prepared and whiter than snow, with
rice like pearls, and pomegranate pips like
rubies, and pickles cut in quaint figures, with
wild truffles and sweet honeycomb. This is my
meal. It is all like enchantment. It comes in
at a sign, and goes away at a sign. It comes
noiselessly on men's heads, while I am listening
to the cuckoo flitting from tree to tree, and to
the nightingales who sing here in the daytime.
It goes away while I am asking the leaves of the
Marguerite for the secret of my lady's heart.

If I lose any of my treasures, my nozzir,
a stately man—plum coloured—will propose
to send for the king's astrologer. The king's