Those In The Bazaar Were
Shabby People For The Most Part, Whose Black Masks Nobody Would
Feel A Curiosity To Remove.
You could see no more of their figures
than if they had been stuffed in bolsters; and even their feet were
brought to a general splay uniformity by the double yellow slippers
which the wives of true believers wear.
But it is in the Greek and
Armenian quarters, and among those poor Christians who were pulling
figs, that you see the beauties; and a man of a generous
disposition may lose his heart half-a-dozen times a day in Smyrna.
There was the pretty maid at work at a tambour-frame in an open
porch, with an old duenna spinning by her side, and a goat tied up
to the railings of the little court-garden; there was the nymph who
came down the stair with the pitcher on her head, and gazed with
great calm eyes, as large and stately as Juno's; there was the
gentle mother, bending over a queer cradle, in which lay a small
crying bundle of infancy. All these three charmers were seen in a
single street in the Armenian quarter, where the house-doors are
all open, and the women of the families sit under the arches in the
court. There was the fig-girl, beautiful beyond all others, with
an immense coil of deep black hair twisted round a head of which
Raphael was worthy to draw the outline and Titian to paint the
colour.
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