French and Oriental Love in a Harem

I imagined myself to be armed now with an overwhelming reason for

refusing their request, but it turned out quite otherwise. When they

heard that my uncle's wife was at the château, they asked to be allowed

to make her acquaintance. They said that they were really bound as

cadines, according to Turkish custom, to pay their respects to my

uncle's wife, "whom her position as legitimate spouse places

hierarchically above us." I got over this difficulty by telling them

that my aunt, being a Christian, was forbidden by her creed to have any

intercourse with Mussulmans.

What especially distinguishes the Turkish woman, my dear Louis, from the

woman whose character has been fashioned by our own remarkable

civilisation, is the instinctive, inborn respect which she always

preserves and observes towards man. Man is the master and the lord, she

is his servant, and she would never dream of setting herself up as his

equal. The Koran on this point has hardly at all modified the biblical

traditions. Unfortunately for me, I must confess that in my household I

have disregarded the law of Islam. Inspired by a higher ideal, you will

understand, without my mentioning it, that my first object has been to

abolish slavery from my harem, by inculcating into the minds of my

houris principles more in conformity with the Christianity which I

profess. I wished, like a modern Prometheus, to kindle the divine spark

in these young and beautiful barbarians, whose minds are still wrapped

up in their oriental superstitions. I wished to elevate their souls, to

cultivate their minds, and in short, to make them my free companions

and no longer my helots.

I may assert with pride that I have been partially successful in my

task. Three months of this treatment had hardly elapsed before all

traces of servile subordination had disappeared. With this faculty for

metamorphosis existing in them, which all women possess, but which is

for ever denied to us men, and thanks above all to the revelations of

our customs and habits contained in novels of my selection, which

Kondjé-Gul read to them during my hours of absence, and to which they

listened with admiration (for they were eager to know all about this

world of ours, which was as yet unknown to them), I soon obtained a

charming combination. Their strange exotic mixture of oriental graces,

blending happily with efforts to imitate the refinements of our

civilisation, their artless tokens of ignorance, their coquettish and

feline instincts, their voluptuous bearing in process of attempted

transformation into bashful reserve, all these phenomena afforded me the

most delightful subject for study ever entered on by a philosopher.