The future is already brightened. The terms of the treaty of peace have finally been signed at San-Sebastiano on the 1st of February. This glorious piece of news has reached us only to-day in this out-of-the-world place.
April 1st.—Mr. Kamsarakan, our Prefect of the Police, is a very jolly fellow, fond of playing jokes on his friends. To-day, for instance, he has invited to dinner all his acquaintances belonging to the Russian colony whom he met in the street, promising them a splendid Russian cabbage-pie. His guests rejoiced beforehand at the thought of partaking of that famous national dish, but as they began to arrive, there was no sign whatever of any preparations for dinner, and Kamsarakan’s servant announced that his master was out and would probably not dine at home to-day. The guests’ countenances expressed the blankest dismay; being far from their fatherland no one had remembered that the first of April was the day of traditional mystifications. As for Kamsarakan, he went at the same time to Mr. Eritzeff’s, one of his invited guests, and asked the servant to give him something to eat. He devoured all the supper, and when poor Eritzeff returned home dismissed from Kamsarakan’s house, he found himself deprived both of his dinner and his supper.
April 2nd.—The Catholics celebrate to-day their Palm-Sunday. We went to their cathedral where Capuchin monks, in brown garments, wearing a cord instead of a girdle, officiated. After mass we visited the school directed by the French Sisters of Mercy. The Turks had shown themselves very uncivil to these Sisters when they arrived at Erzeroum, but they got accustomed to them afterwards, and begin now to esteem the good sisters for their attendance on the sick and wounded.
April 4th.—Our Tartar servant Housnadine has arrived from Kars. He has made that journey in sixteen days, being upset several times. Housnadine has brought me different indispensable articles. Until now my wardrobe was in a shocking condition; a small portmanteau contained all my belongings.
We walked down to the ramparts this afternoon with the Gilberts, and rambled over the old fort, surrounded by high massive walls through the embrasures of which cannons are to be seen. During all these eight years of their sojourn in Erzeroum the Gilberts are entering this citadel for the first time, it had been terra prohibita to all strangers up till now. Pushing forward we climbed up a high tower by a narrow winding staircase; my long habit was dreadfully in the way and I stumbled over it continually. The citadel is now occupied by the Russian regiment of Bakou and three or four scores of Turkish soldiers entrusted to watch over the warehouse, who presented arms to my husband. There is a great bond of sympathy between these Osmanlies and our soldiers; though not one of them can speak a word of Turkish, they explained themselves quite easily in a highly fantastic language of their own. Maksoud Effendi, the chief of this small Turkish detachment bewitched us by his amiability and led us to admire the edifice of Chifket-Minaret, a beautiful Arabian building of the ninth century, with two formidable pillars of the Byzantine style at the entrance. According to what the Armenians say a saint of their nationality reposes in that minaret, but the Mussulmans pretend that it is the burial place of one of their most celebrated “imams.” For the moment this mausoleum, as well as the innermost recesses of that edifice, are encumbered with guns, bombs, shells and other objects of but little religious character.
April 6th.—The officers of the rifle battalion invited us to come and take tea in their camp. At our approach a military band struck up a march. The musicians were surrounded by a red-fezzed mob, and the natives, generally lank and thin, looked contemptible little pieces of humanity beside our tall portly soldiers. We were invited to dismount and entered a great tent where we sat down at a long table. Our hosts who were awfully nice to us, proposed a little refreshment and drank our health.
April 7th.—Our landlord, an Italian chemist named Ricci, has transformed himself into a famous physician here, his daughters go to the French school and wear “tchartchaffs,” when they start out of doors. Eleonora, the eldest Signorina Ricci, came in this afternoon to announce to me the visit of the wife of the President of the Town Council; I ran to the window and saw an araba (a Turkish chariot,) covered inside with red cloth approaching our house. The araba was drawn by a pair of beautiful white bullocks, a red-fezzed boy of about twelve was following behind mounted on a tiny pony, and two male servants were running on each side of the vehicle. When the carriage stopped at our door, three women, wrapped up in black veils, stepped out of the chariot and entered our drawing-room. The President’s wife, an outrageously painted young woman, was followed by her little son and two female slaves, a white one and a negress; Turkish ladies of fashion never go out without their attendants. The negress in her scarlet vestment with large printed black flowers reminded me of “Asucena” the Troubadour’s mother. She has been brought over from Stamboul where her mother still resides in the Sultan’s harem. This black Venus was bought by the President’s wife for the sum of a thousand francs. Through Eleonora as interpreter, I was able to carry on a conversation with my Turkish guests, in which harem life was the only topic. The Mussulman women are incapable of seeing anything beyond it, their souls are asleep, they are dull and unimaginative, without any keen interests, and deplorably ignorant; most of them never turn the leaves of a book or trace a word upon paper. The President’s wife told me that she was surnamed “Blue Hanum” on account of her blue eyes. She paid me a lot of compliments and appeared very astonished that my husband allowed me to associate with men and that he permitted me to appear before them unveiled. She plagued me with childish questions about my sentiments towards my husband, and in her turn she related to me the sensations that she experienced at the time when her husband had two wives; both consorts cried bitterly each night when their Pasha gave his preference to the rival spouse. She told me with a smile of satisfaction that her rival died a few years ago, leaving her an undivided sovereignty over her husband. Harem slavery begins at the age of twelve, till then Turkish girls are as free as European children, but on her twelfth birthday the girl becomes a woman, she adopts the “tchartchaff” and is condemned to see the world darkly through a veil. Henceforth she is a prisoner in the harem.
The negress slave proposed a nigger-boy to me, when suddenly the idea struck her that I should wish to appropriate her little son, and she hastened to warn me that he was a mulatto and not a thoroughbred nigger; she told me that I could order one from Diarbekir, and that he wouldn’t cost more than five hundred francs, and added that I could also procure for myself from that same place a splendid young negress who could speak several languages, but she warned me charitably that these learned negresses were often unprincipled, and dangerous to keep, on account of their propensity to seduce the master of the house! I replied laughingly that in that case I should certainly prefer to buy a nigger boy. When coffee was brought in, the negress and the slave sat down on their heels upon the floor to sip it, they daren’t do it otherwise in the presence of their mistress. After a while the negress asked permission to go and smoke in the corridor; it was only a pretext to have a peep at Sergy and his aide-de-camp, who were just then in the next room. In leaving our house the President’s wife, who had severely remonstrated with the negress for her improper curiosity revealed to her by her little son, could not resist the temptation of stealing a glance at the imprisoned gentlemen through the chink of the door. She invited me to come and see her soon, promising to show me the best dancing girls (bayadères) in Erzeroum.
Now, to turn to the other side of the medal, I must say that during our stay at Erzeroum our roses weren’t entirely without thorns. The typhus-fever continued to rage, and mowed down whole ranks of our soldiers. Every day there were new victims. The Russian cemetery is quite full now, and we are obliged to bury our soldiers in a common grave. Nearly every morning I see sinister waggons carrying away the unfortunate victims of this dreadful epidemic to their last dwelling-place. I shudder when I think of it!
We are warned that a fanatic society under the name of “Avengers” (Christian haters) is newly organised, and that we run great risks during our rides through the bazaars and Turkish quarters.