Nice, March 1907.

There are habits, my dearest friend, which cannot be lost in the West any more than they can be acquired in the East. You know what a terrible task it is for a Turkish woman to write a letter—even a Turkish woman who pretends to be Western in many ways. Can you, who belong to a race which can quietly take a decision and act upon it, understand this fault of ours, which consists of always putting off till the morrow what should be done the same day? Thanks to this laziness, we Turks are where we are to-day. Some people call it kismet; you can find it in almost all our actions. Since we started, now a year ago, I have been expecting an answer to a letter sent the day after my arrival here. It will come; Allah knows when, but it will come.

But I am as bad as my friend, you will say. Three weeks ago I began this letter to you, and it is not finished yet, for all I am doing is so strange and curious, I feel I must let you know all about it.

It was at Monte Carlo that I first saw and heard the wonderful operas of Wagner. When I heard they were performing Rheingold, in spite of medical advice not to go into a theatre, I could not keep away. Since my childhood, I had longed to hear an orchestral interpretation of the works of this genius. I seemed to have a presentiment that it would be to me an incomparable revelation, and I was not disappointed.

Do you know what it is, to have loved music all your life and never to have an opportunity of hearing a first-class concert? My father used to invite the distinguished women artistes, passing through Constantinople, to come to sing and play for us. He, too, was passionately fond of music. But what I longed above all to hear was a full orchestra, and Wagner! So that, when I was actually at Monte Carlo listening to the entrancing work of this Master, it was as though I had been blind all my days and had at last received my sight.

It was wonderful! It was magnificent! It moved my very soul! Why should we regret having left our country when such masterpieces as this are yet to be heard?

I did not want to stir. I wanted to remain under the spell of that glorious music! But the theatre authorities thought differently, and in a little while the beautiful performance of Rheingold became one of my most happy memories.

*****

The scene changes. From my first beautiful impression of music I came to look upon that most degrading spectacle of your Western civilisation—I mean gambling. I had never realised till now that collective robbery could be so shameful! That a poor, unintelligent, characterless being can come to Monte Carlo, ruin himself and his family, and kill himself without anyone taking the trouble to pity him a little or have him treated like a sick man, is to me incomprehensible. When I told the lady and gentleman, who accompanied me, the impression that their gaming-tables had on me, they smiled; indeed they made an effort not to laugh.

I remained long enough to study that strange collection of heads round the table with their expressions all so different, but the most hideous which I have ever seen.

I had received that day two new and very different impressions; one the impression of the highest form of art and the other the impression of perhaps the saddest of all modern vices.

The whole night through I was torn between these two impressions. Which would get the better of me? I tried to hum little passages of Rheingold, and fix my attention on Wagner’s opera and the joy it had been to me, but in spite of my efforts my thoughts wandered, and I was far away in Turkey.

In our cloistered homes I had heard vague rumours of magic games, the players at which lost their all or made a colossal fortune according to the caprice of fate. But I did not pay much attention to this fairy tale. Now, however, I have seen and believe, and a feeling of terrible anxiety comes over me whenever I think of the honest men of my own country, who are concentrating all their energies on the acquirement of Western civilisation. They will not accept Europeanism in moderate doses— they will drain the cup to the very dregs—this awful vice, as well as drunkenness and all your other weaknesses.

In the course of time I fell asleep. I was back in Turkey enduring the horrors of the Hamidian rÉgime. Rheingold was forgotten, and the azure of the Mediterranean Sea, the flowers, and the summer dresses. I went from scene to scene, one more awful than the other, but everywhere I went and to everything I saw were attached the diabolical faces I had seen at the Monte Carlo gaming-tables.—Your affectionate

Zeyneb.