Disenchanted Author:Pierre Loti Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III It was a silent meal, this last breakfast in her old home, as she sat between two women so obscurely hostile as the governess and her stern grandmother. ... more » When it was over, she went to her room, and only wished she could lock and double-lock herself in, but Turkish women's bedrooms have no locks; she could only give orders through Kondje-Gul to all the servants and slaves, who were for ever on guard, day and night, as is the custom, in the halls and the long passages of her suite of rooms, like so many tame and intrusive watch-dogs. During this last supreme day, still her own, she wanted to prepare herself as if for death, sort her papers, and a thousand little treasures, and, above all, burn things, burn them for fear of the eye of the unknown man who in a few hours would be her master. There was no haven of refuge for her distressful soul, and her terror and revolt increased as the day went on. She seated herself in front of her writing-table and relighted the taper which was to communicate its flame to a host of mysterious little letters that lay sleeping in the white enamelled drawers; letters from friends just married, or quaking in anticipation of marriage; letters in Turkish, in French, in German, in English, all proclaiming rebellion, all poisoned by the deep pessimism which, in our day, is ravaging the harems of the Turks. Now and again she re-read a sentence, hesitated regretfully, and then, after all, put the little sheet into the colourless flame — a hardly visible glimmer in the sunshine. And all these treasures, all the little secrets of beautiful young women, their suppressed indignation, their vain laments — all turned to ashes, piled up and mingled in a copper brazier, the only oriental object in the room. The drawers emptied, the letters destr...« less