A month without any news, you say. And you talk sarcastically about my leisure, and rally me upon the subject of that famous system, which I used to boast was a simplification of life. If I might judge from your twaddle, you imagine me to be saddled with the very cares and worries from which I justly boasted that I was exempt. You picture me running backwards and forwards, and incessantly occupied with my four wives, so that I have not even time to write to you.
Absurd fancy: this is my real situation.
As soon as my four wives were settled down in their new home, they permitted me much more freedom than did the least burdensome of my former amours. No anxieties now, no jealousies, no fears for the future. They are not like some of those feminine taskmasters who take entire possession of you, forcing you to follow the adored object to the theatre, or take it to the ball, in order to have the pleasure of watching it flirting bare-shouldered with some intimate friend, who will perhaps be its next lover. No, in my rôle of sultan my amours are modestly hidden from profane eyes in the recesses of my harem, and there I am always welcome whenever I choose to come. I keep the key in my pocket. At any hour of the day or night I can go there in my quality of owner without having to leave my club, my friends, my work, or my amusements a moment earlier than I desire.
Such, then, is the "anxious existence" which you attribute to me. Find me a husband who can act in the same way.
Still, as might have been foreseen, great changes have taken place in the internal arrangements of my household, where it became necessary that the Turkish elements should be partially replaced by others more adapted to the exigencies of western civilization.
A memorable event has occurred.
Hadidjé, Nazli, and Zouhra went the other day to the opera. It is needless to say that I was there. I must admit that their nervousness was so extreme at making this bold experiment that, watching them from my own stall as they came in, I thought for a moment that they were going to run away again.
Already in their walks they were getting into training, and in regard to their veils exhibited a certain amount of coquetry; but now it became necessary to disregard the law of Mahomet entirely. They had never seen the inside of a theatre before, so you can imagine that when they found themselves in the box, with their unveiled faces exposed to the gaze of a multitude of infidel eyes, all the bold resolutions which they had made for this decisive effort were put to the rout. Strange as such Mohammedan bashfulness may seem to us, they felt, as they afterwards told me, that appearing there unveiled, was "just like exhibiting themselves naked."
However, as soon as this first impression was overcome, thanks chiefly to the exhortations of Mohammed, who was almost at his wits' ends to manage them, they succeeded in putting on sufficient assurance to dissemble their very sincere dread, so that at a distance it looked merely like excessive shyness. The lifting of the curtain for the first act of "Don Juan" fortunately changed the current of their emotions. During the entr'acte their box became the object of attraction to the subscribers and the frequenters of first night's performances. Their indolent, oriental type of beauty, notwithstanding the partial disguise effected by their present costumes, could not fail to produce a sensation.
Who, it was asked, was this old gentleman with his three daughters of such surprising beauty? In the Jockey Club's box, where I went to hear the gossip, everyone was talking about them, as of some important political event; Mohammed was an American millionaire, according to some, a Russian prince, or a Rajah just arrived from India, according to others. When I smiled in a significant manner (as I began to do, on purpose), they immediately surmised that I fancied I knew more about the matter than the rest of them, thereupon they surrounded me, and pressed me with questions.