telling me not to come to our home on the island that day, because it was Tuesday, as ill-omened a day with the Greeks as Friday is with the rest of Europe.
Indeed this was the East again—the East with its cry to Allah, and its predominating superstitions. But I could not yet feel the proper respect for ancestral superstitions. I had the arrogant self-confidence of youth in full, and, as youth feels, I felt that the right lay with my own inclinations. It was a hot and oppressive summer day in town, and in disregard of maternal displeasure I decided to go on immediately by the morning boat.
In spite of the heat and of a strange feeling of oppression in the atmosphere, I went on foot to the Bridge of Galata, in order that I might revel again in the crooked streets of Constantinople, hear the merchants cry out their wares, be followed by some of the stray dogs, salute my old friend Ali Baba, the boatman, and thus assure myself that I really was again in my beloved city on the Golden Horn.
By the time I had bought my ticket for the steamer, Paris was as far from my spirit as it was from my flesh—and the superstitions of my mother no longer seemed unworthy of attention, even though I still persisted in pleasing my selfish self. The idea of a happy compromise suggested itself: I would take the boat to the
