Queer and surprising event of his life.
I made the valet-de-place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to
have a dragoman in one's service) conduct me forthwith to the best
appointed hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at
Tophana, and into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the
cooling-room of the bath.
The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted
gallery running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery
to another, ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue
cloths, for the use of the frequenters of the place. All round the
room and the galleries were matted inclosures, fitted with numerous
neat beds and cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true
believers smoking, or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state.
I was led up to one of these beds, to rather a retired corner, in
consideration of my modesty; and to the next bed presently came a
dancing dervish, who forthwith began to prepare for the bath.
When the dancing dervish had taken off his yellow sugar-loaf cap,
his gown, shawl, &c., he was arrayed in two large blue cloths; a
white one being thrown over his shoulders, and another in the shape
of a turban plaited neatly round his head; the garments of which he
divested himself were folded up in another linen, and neatly put
by. I beg leave to state I was treated in precisely the same
manner as the dancing dervish.
The reverend gentleman then put on a pair of wooden pattens, which
elevated him about six inches from the ground; and walked down the
stairs, and paddled across the moist marble floor of the hall, and
in at a little door, by the which also Titmarsh entered. But I had
none of the professional agility of the dancing dervish; I
staggered about very ludicrously upon the high wooden pattens; and
should have been down on my nose several times, had not the
dragoman and the master of the bath supported me down the stairs
and across the hall. Dressed in three large cotton napkins, with a
white turban round my head, I thought of Pall Mall with a sort of
despair. I passed the little door, it was closed behind me - I was
in the dark - I couldn't speak the language - in a white turban. Mon
Dieu! what was going to happen?
The dark room was the tepidarium, a moist oozing arched den, with a
light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling.
Yells of frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging
through the echoing arches, the doors clapped to with loud
reverberations.
