Marianne and the Lords of the East

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DRIVEN by the strong arms of its four and twenty rowers, the gilded caïque was literally flying over the smooth waters of the Golden Horn. Other vessels scattered like frightened chickens before it for fear of impeding the royal barge.

Seated beneath the red silk canopy in the stern, the Princess Sant'Anna watched the dark walls of the seraglio draw nearer through the slow dusk that was beginning to fall over Constantinople. In another moment they, too, would be enveloped in the shadows which had already fallen on the narrow streets and close-packed houses of Stamboul.

The number of other boats around them dwindled as they advanced because the crossing of the Golden Horn was forbidden after the firing of the sunset gun. But this was a law which naturally did not apply to vessels from the palace.

Marianne was perspiring in the court dress of leaf-green satin which she had donned more or less at random with a view to the audience before her. These first days of September retained all the heat and humidity of high summer. For a week past, the city had been steeped in an atmosphere like a Turkish bath which had wreathed the monuments in a yellow fog and made the wearing of even the lightest clothing a penance, much less untold yards of heavy Lyons silk with long kid gloves reaching well above the elbow and almost touching the short, puffed sleeves of the dress.

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