In another street, entirely Turkish and silent, you are suddenly startled by the sound of a horn and the stamping of horses’ feet; turning to see what it means, you find it difficult to believe your eyes when a large car rolls gayly into sight over some tracks which up to that moment you had not noticed, filled with Turks and Europeans, with its officials in uniform and its printed tariff of fares, for all the world like a _tramway_ in Vienna or Paris. The effect of such an apparition, seen in one of those streets, is not to be described: it is like a burlesque or some huge joke, and you laugh aloud as you watch it disappear, as though you had never seen anything of the kind before. With the omnibus the life and movement of Europe seem to vanish, and you find yourself back in Asia, like a change of scene at the theatre. Issuing from almost any of these silent, deserted streets, you come out upon small open spaces shaded by one huge plane tree: on one hand there is a fountain out of which camels are drinking; on the other, a café in front of which a number of Turks recline on mats, smoking and gazing into vacancy; beside the door stands a large fig tree, up whose trunk a vine clambers, extending out over the branches and falling in waving garlands to the ground, and between whose leaves enchanting glimpses are caught of the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora dotted all over with white sails. The flood of light and the death-like stillness give these places a certain character, half solemn, half melancholy, which makes an indelible impression upon the mind: one is carried on and on, drawn, as it were, out of himself by a subtle sense of mystery which steeps the senses little by little, until he loses all idea of time and space and seems to float on a vague cloud of dreams.
[Illustration: Fountain in Court of the Mosque of Ahmed.]