For Some Time You May Manage By Great Care To Thread Your Way
Through The Streets Of Stamboul Without Incurring
Contact, for the
Turks, though scornful of the terrors felt by the Franks, are
generally very courteous in yielding to
That which they hold to be
a useless and impious precaution, and will let you pass safe if
they can. It is impossible, however, that your immunity can last
for any length of time if you move about much through the narrow
streets and lanes of a crowded city.
As for me, I soon got "compromised." After one day of rest, the
prayers of my hostess began to lose their power of keeping me from
the pestilent side of the Golden Horn. Faithfully promising to
shun the touch of all imaginable substances, however enticing, I
set off very cautiously, and held my way uncompromised till I
reached the water's edge; but before my caique was quite ready some
rueful-looking fellows came rapidly shambling down the steps with a
plague-stricken corpse, which they were going to bury amongst the
faithful on the other side of the water. I contrived to be so much
in the way of this brisk funeral, that I was not only touched by
the men bearing the body, but also, I believe, by the foot of the
dead man, as it hung lolling out of the bier. This accident gave
me such a strong interest in denying the soundness of the contagion
theory, that I did in fact deny and repudiate it altogether; and
from that time, acting upon my own convenient view of the matter, I
went wherever I chose, without taking any serious pains to avoid a
touch. It seems to me now very likely that the Europeans are
right, and that the plague may be really conveyed by contagion; but
during the whole time of my remaining in the East, my views on this
subject more nearly approached to those of the fatalists; and so,
when afterwards the plague of Egypt came dealing his blows around
me, I was able to live amongst the dying without that alarm and
anxiety which would inevitably have pressed upon my mind if I had
allowed myself to believe that every passing touch was really a
probable death-stroke.
And perhaps as you make your difficult way through a steep and
narrow alley, shut in between blank walls, and little frequented by
passers, you meet one of those coffin-shaped bundles of white linen
that implies an Ottoman lady. Painfully struggling against the
obstacles to progression interposed by the many folds of her clumsy
drapery, by her big mud-boots, and especially by her two pairs of
slippers, she works her way on full awkwardly enough, but yet there
is something of womanly consciousness in the very labour and effort
with which she tugs and lifts the burthen of her charms. She is
closely followed by her women slaves. Of her very self you see
nothing except the dark, luminous eyes that stare against your
face, and the tips of the painted fingers depending like rose-buds
from out of the blank bastions of the fortress.
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