Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/42

26 preaching to those of the fatalist; and so, when I afterwards encountered the Plague in full force, I was able to live amongst the dying with much less anxiety of mind, than 1 should have suffered, if I had believed that every touch which I met with, was a possible death-stroke.

And perhaps as you make your difficult way through a steep and narrow alley, which winds between blank walls, and is little frequented by passers, you meet one of those coffin-shaped bundles of white linen which implies an Ottoman lady. Painfully struggling against the obstacles to progression which are interposed by the many folds of her clumsy drapery, by her big mud boots, and especially by her two pairs of slippers, she waddles along full awkwardly enough, but yet there is something of womanly consciousness in the very labor and effort with which she tugs and lifts the burthen of her charms; she is close 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 rosebuds from out the blank bastions of the fortress. She turns, and turns again, and carefully glances around her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak, she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty. And this which so dizzies your brain is not the light, changeful grace, which leaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or only a soul; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectness of hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous color. There is fire, though, too—high courage, and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride through those scarcely parted lips.

You smile at pretty women—you turn pale before the beauty that is great enough to have dominion over you. She sees, and exults in your giddiness; she sees and smiles; then presently,