The deed is done! We managed everything without the slightest hitch. I write to you from Paris, from our house in the Rue de Varennes; it seems like years since I was last there, so many things have happened during the six months since I left it. All my surroundings belong to a life so different from my present one, that it requires an exertion of thought to identify myself and realise my position here.

My harem is established in the Rue de Monsieur in the former “Parc aux Cerfs” of my uncle a splendid mansion, the gardens of which reach to the Boulevard des Invalides. My uncle has absolutely the genius of an ancient Epicurean transferred by accident into our own century. To look at the street, with its cold and deserted aspect, one might imagine oneself in a corner of aristocratic Versailles. My mystery is safely hidden away there. Mohammed while at Paris is no longer an exiled Minister, but simply a rich Turk who has acquired a taste for European civilisation. His name is Omer-Rashid-Effendi, a name under which he has already passed here twice.

My houris are astonished with all they see, and their pleasure is indescribable. Of course my first care was to Europeanise their toilettes. In pursuance of my orders (for, as you may be sure, I do not appear in such matters) a fashionable dressmaker was sent for by Mohammed. What a business it was! The difficulty was to avoid making them, with their oriental styles and deportments, look stiff and awkward when confined for the first time in the garb of our civilised torture-house.

By a happy compromise between fashion and fancy, the clever artiste has contrived for them costumes which are marvels of good taste and simplicity. Nothing could be more successful than this metamorphosis; their coiffures complete the picture, and I can hardly recognise my almées under the bewitching little hats worn by our Parisian women. I assure you it is a transfiguration replete with surprises and unexpected charms. Attired like our women of fashion, their striking and original beauty, which was my admiration at El-Nouzha, impresses me in quite a novel manner, which I seem to understand better as I compare them by the side of our own women. Like young foreign ladies of distinction habited in the costumes of our civilisation, they seem to shed around them wherever they go a sort of exotic fragrance.

Everything, of course, had to be changed now that they are in Paris; they could no longer follow the routine of their former existence within the four walls of the harem. They were now at liberty to go out walking, and take little trips; but here at once appeared a most serious difficulty for them to overcome. How could they show themselves in the streets, the Champs Elysees, or the Bois, without their veils just like infidels? That was a serious question! It was impossible for them to make up their minds to such a shameful breach of Mussulman law; and, if I must admit it, I myself experienced a strange sort of revulsion at the thought of it. Yes, to this have I come! Nevertheless, on the other hand, it was quite out of the question for them to shew themselves out of doors enshrouded in their triple veils, attracting wherever they went the remarks of the idle crowd.

At last, after a great many hesitations, Zouhra, who is the bravest of them all, ventured to go out with me, buried in the recesses of a brougham, and protected by a very thick kind of mantilla, which after all was hardly any less impenetrable than a yashmak. Then they grew bolder, and impelled by curiosity, their coquetry getting the better of their bashful timidity, they took a drive one day in a landau to the Bois with Mohammed. I mounted on horseback and met them, without appearing to know them. Everything went off as well as could be.

The carriage which I had purchased is severely simple in style, as is suitable for a foreigner of distinction. In his European disguise Mohammed maintains that expression of serene dignity which so excellently suits his part of a father escorting his three daughters. There is, in short, nothing about the latter to excite attention. If a dark pair of eyes is sometimes distinguishable through the embroidered veils, the fashion, at any rate, permits the features to be sufficiently disguised to conceal the beauty of my sultanas from over-bold glances.

Of course poor Kondje-Gul, still living away from the others, does not take part in these frolics; but we thus gain some hours of liberty. On the second day, while my wives were driving in the Bois, we took our opportunity of going out, like true lovers, arm in arm; it was most delightful!

We went on foot to the Boulevards. You may guess what raptures Kondje-Gul was in each step we took. It was the first time she had been out with me alone, the first time she had felt herself free and released from the imprisonment of the harem. Many an inquisitive fellow, seeing us pass, and struck with her dignified manner, stopped of a sudden, and tried to distinguish her features through the veil. We quietly laughed at his disappointment.

When we arrived at the Rue de la Paix, we went into some of the well-known jewellers’ shops. At the sight of so many marvels, you may guess how she was dazzled. She felt as if in a dream. We spoke in Turkish; and the puzzled shop-keepers gazed in astonishment upon this strange display of Asiatic charms, which they had evidently met with for the first time. All this amused us; and it is unnecessary to add that I quitted these haunts of temptation with a considerably lighter purse than when I entered them.

We have already had several of these little sprees, and nothing can be more fascinating than Kondje-Gul’s childish delight; everything is new to her. Transported, as if by magic, from her monotonous existence at El-Nouzha into the midst of these splendours, this free life, and this animated world, she feels like one walking in a dream; the whole atmosphere intoxicates her.

We form plans innumerable. In the first place we have decided that her position in regard to my wives shall be definitely fixed, and that she shall live henceforth separated from them in another part of the house, where she shall have private attendants. We shall thus be able to see each other without any constraint, and she will no longer be subjected to the sneers of my silly houris, who have been treating her apparent disgrace too brutally since our arrival at Paris. My proud Kondje-Gul, in the consciousness of her ascendency over me, would be sure to make a scene with them some day.

Besides, as I have already told you, she furnishes me every day with a more and more engrossing subject of study. I should like you to understand what sweet and seductive labour this progressive initiation is; I am watching the development of a mind which I am myself forming. There is no subject in regard to her, not even her receptive intelligence, which fails to afford me innumerable surprises. Sometimes I discover original views and opinions of hers upon matters connected with our European civilisation, at the correctness of which I am absolutely amazed. Her progress is surprising, and she wishes to learn everything, knowing how much is required in order to become “civilised,” as she calls it.

My uncle and my aunt are in Paris.

A month without any news, you say. And you talk sarcastically about my leisure, and rally me upon the subject of that famous system, which I used to boast was a simplification of life. If I might judge from your twaddle, you imagine me to be saddled with the very cares and worries from which I justly boasted that I was exempt. You picture me running backwards and forwards, and incessantly occupied with my four wives, so that I have not even time to write to you.

Absurd fancy: this is my real situation.

As soon as my four wives were settled down in their new home, they permitted me much more freedom than did the least burdensome of my former amours. No anxieties now, no jealousies, no fears for the future. They are not like some of those feminine taskmasters who take entire possession of you, forcing you to follow the adored object to the theatre, or take it to the ball, in order to have the pleasure of watching it flirting bare-shouldered with some intimate friend, who will perhaps be its next lover. No, in my rôle of sultan my amours are modestly hidden from profane eyes in the recesses of my harem, and there I am always welcome whenever I choose to come. I keep the key in my pocket. At any hour of the day or night I can go there in my quality of owner without having to leave my club, my friends, my work, or my amusements a moment earlier than I desire.

Such, then, is the “anxious existence” which you attribute to me. Find me a husband who can act in the same way.

Still, as might have been foreseen, great changes have taken place in the internal arrangements of my household, where it became necessary that the Turkish elements should be partially replaced by others more adapted to the exigencies of western civilization.

A memorable event has occurred.

Hadidje, Nazli, and Zouhra went the other day to the opera. It is needless to say that I was there. I must admit that their nervousness was so extreme at making this bold experiment that, watching them from my own stall as they came in, I thought for a moment that they were going to run away again.

Already in their walks they were getting into training, and in regard to their veils exhibited a certain amount of coquetry; but now it became necessary to disregard the law of Mahomet entirely. They had never seen the inside of a theatre before, so you can imagine that when they found themselves in the box, with their unveiled faces exposed to the gaze of a multitude of infidel eyes, all the bold resolutions which they had made for this decisive effort were put to the rout. Strange as such Mohammedan bashfulness may seem to us, they felt, as they afterwards told me, that appearing there unveiled, was “just like exhibiting themselves naked.”

However, as soon as this first impression was overcome, thanks chiefly to the exhortations of Mohammed, who was almost at his wits’ ends to manage them, they succeeded in putting on sufficient assurance to dissemble their very sincere dread, so that at a distance it looked merely like excessive shyness. The lifting of the curtain for the first act of “Don Juan” fortunately changed the current of their emotions. During the entr’acte their box became the object of attraction to the subscribers and the frequenters of first night’s performances. Their indolent, oriental type of beauty, notwithstanding the partial disguise effected by their present costumes, could not fail to produce a sensation.

Who, it was asked, was this old gentleman with his three daughters of such surprising beauty? In the Jockey Club’s box, where I went to hear the gossip, everyone was talking about them, as of some important political event; Mohammed was an American millionaire, according to some, a Russian prince, or a Rajah just arrived from India, according to others. When I smiled in a significant manner (as I began to do, on purpose), they immediately surmised that I fancied I knew more about the matter than the rest of them, thereupon they surrounded me, and pressed me with questions.

I had already come to the conclusion that it would be better to calm their minds, and thus avoid all inconvenient enquiries. I therefore gave them an account, which after all was not far from the truth, namely, that Omer-Rashid-Effendi was a rich Turk, “whose acquaintance I had the honour of making at Damascus, and who had come to stay at Paris with his family.” I thus insured myself against any suspicion of mystery arising in connection with my visits to the house in the Rue de Monsieur, in the event of these coming to light by any chance.

Our relations, you will see, were thus defined once for all. This new life is nothing but a succession of delights to my almées; and I have really now attained the ideal in the way of harems, through the absence of that monotony which is the inevitable result of the system of rigid seclusion. Under the influence of our civilized surroundings, the ideas of my houris are undergoing a gradual transformation. They have French lady’s maids, and their study of our refinements of fashion has opened out quite a new world of coquettish charms to them. My “little animals” have grown into women: this single word will convey to you the whole delicious significance of this story of mine, the secret of which you alone in the whole world possess.

As we had decided, Kondje-Gul has been separated from her over-jealous companions. Hadidje, 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. I can place implicit confidence in the discretion of my servants who wait on us like mutes in a seraglio: consequently Kondje-Gul and I are as free as possible. When I want to go out with her, I pay a short visit to my wives, and after a quarter of an hour’s talk, leave them and go off in my carriage, in the recesses of which my darling reclines. Now you see what a simple device it is and how ingenious; still it involves a certain amount of constraint for me, and an isolation hard to endure for Kondje-Gul. She reads and devours everything that I bring her in the way of books; but the days are long, and Mohammed, with his time taken up by the others, cannot accompany her out of doors. I therefore conceived the idea of taking her away from the harem altogether, and thus relieving her of the contemptuous insults which my other silly women still find opportunities of inflicting upon her. The difficulty was to procure a chaperon for her, some kind of suitable and reliable duenna whom I could leave with her in a separate establishment; this duenna has been found.

The other day Kondje-Gul and I were talking together about a little house which I had discovered in the upper part of the Champs Elysees, and of an English governess, who seemed to me to possess the right qualifications for a pretended mother:

“If you like,” said Kondje-Gul, “I can tell you a much simpler arrangement.”

“Well?” I replied.

“Instead of this governess whom I don’t know, I would much rather have my mother. I should be so happy at seeing her again!”

“Your mother?” I exclaimed with surprise; “do you know where she is then?”

“Oh, yes! for I often write to her.”

She then told me all her past history, which I had never before thought of asking her, believing that she had been left alone in the world. It afforded me a complete revelation of those Turkish customs which seem so strange to us. Kondje-Gul’s mother, as I have told you, was a Circassian, who came to Constantinople to enter the service of a cadine of the Sultan. Kondje-Gul being a very pretty child, her mother had, in her ambitious fancy, anticipated from her beauty a brilliant career for her. In order to realise this expectation, she left her at twelve years old with a family who were instructed to bring her up better than she could have done herself, until Kondje-Gul was old enough to be sought after as a cadine or a wife.

This hope on the part of her mother was accomplished, as you know, for the girl was purchased for a good round sum by Mohammed. Thus poor Kondje-Gul fulfilled her destiny. Then she related to me how her mother, several years ago, had found a better situation for herself with a French consul at Smyrna, and had learnt French there.

Kondje-Gul’s idea was a happy one, and I was inclined to entertain it. I consented to her writing to Smyrna, and some days later she received an answer to the effect that in about a couple of months her mother would be able to join her providing the requisite means were sent her for this purpose. I have a house in view where they can live together. It is a little house belonging to Count de Teral, who is on his way back to Lisbon: one might really fancy he had got it ready on purpose for me.

What have you to say to this, you profound moralist?