It is with some misgivings and deep sadness that I undertake the writing of this chapter. When I was asked to do it, at first I wanted to decline; but that seemed to me a sort of betrayal of the land of Turkey – so I accepted!

Indeed, as things are, I would be less capable of writing an impersonal description with the detachment of an artist than ever. What is more, those wishing to follow me will have to resign themselves to looking through my eyes and it is almost through my soul that they are about to observe the great Stamboul!

Oh, Stamboul! Of all the names which still enrapture me, this is the most magical. As soon as it is uttered, a vision is sketched out before me: high, high in the air and first, in the distant vagueness, something huge is outlined, an incomparable silhouette of a town. The sea lies at her feet, a sea ploughed by ships and boats in their thousands, stirring it up without respite. It is also a sea from which the hubbub of Babel rises up in the all the languages of the Levant. The smoke floats like a long horizontal cloud over the ranks of black steamers and golden caiques and over the motley throng shouting out their business deals and their haggling; the incessant smoke covers everything with its veil. It is over there, above this steam and oil sprays that this enormous town appears, as if suspended. In the clear sky, minarets, as sharp as lances, point upwards, and dome upon dome, large round domes, some greyish-white, others dull white, rise in tiers, like stone bell-shaped pyramids: motionless mosques unchanged by the centuries. These mosques were whiter perhaps in times gone by, when our Western smoke had not yet polluted the air all around and when in the past only sailing ships came to drop anchor in their shadow, but always the same, and for centuries crowning Stamboul with their same giant cupolas, giving it this same unique outline grander than any other town on earth. These mosques are the unchangeable past. They conceal in their stones and marble the ancient Muslim spirit which still towers above where they stand. Whether arriving from the far reaches of Marmara or the far