"Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there--everybody killed in the
assault; there is nobody left but us." He began blowing again. The
donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had
left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace,
which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with
Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many
sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the
Tuileries on February 24th, 1848. In one of the courtyards, planted with
orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish balconies
of the Bey's Palace, there was a little door, which had been confided to
the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a sergeant major
of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem. It was the door into the harem and
gave access to several courts, surrounded by galleries, both on the
ground floor and first story, on which opened spacious rooms carpeted
with divans and cushions and with shelves all round piled with
quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all, stuffs, especially
silken ones. The women--there were over two hundred of them--spent their
lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on the cushions in these
apartments. They were divided into two categories. The negresses, who
formed the great majority, occupied two court-yards, and these courts
exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the whole of the Bey's palace,
whenever the wind blew from that quarter. The white and sallow-
complexioned women all lived together, they all wore Arab dress, with
more or fewer trinkets, and there were some pretty women among them. Two
were Greeks and there was one really beautiful Moorish woman, called
Ayescha. I did her likeness, and that of the chief eunuch as well. He
was a negro, growing grey, with a deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled
up in very fine haiks which showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and