With regard to the Hebrews I am prepared to assert, having been to Morocco myself, that those of Constantinople have nothing in common with their fellows of the northern coast of Africa, where observing experts say they have discovered in all its primitive purity the original Oriental type of Hebrew beauty. In the hope of finding some traces of this same beauty, I summoned up all my courage and thoroughly explored the vast Ghetto of Balata, which winds like an unclean reptile along the banks of the Golden Horn. I penetrated into the most wretched purlieus, among hovels “encrusted with mould” like the shores of the Dantesque pool; through passageways which nothing would induce me to enter again except on stilts, and, holding my nose; I peered through windows hung with filthy rags into dark, malodorous rooms; paused before damp courtyards exhaling a smell of mould and decay strong enough to take one’s breath away; pushed my way through groups of scrofulous children; brushed up against horrible old men who looked as though they had died of the plague and come to life again; avoiding now a dog covered with sores, now a pool of black mud, dodging under rows of loathsome rags hung from greasy cords, or stumbling over heaps of decaying stuff whose smell was enough to make one faint outright. And, after all, my heroism met with no reward. Among all the many women whom I encountered wearing the national kalpak--an article resembling a sort of elongated turban, covering the hair and ears--I saw, it is true, some faces in which could be discovered that delicate regularity of feature and the expression of gentle resignation which are supposed to characterize the Constantinopolitan Jewess; some vague profiles of a Rebecca or a Rachel, with almond-shaped eyes full of a soft sweetness; an occasional graceful, erect figure standing in Raphaelesque attitude in an open doorway, with one delicate hand resting lightly on the curly head of a child; but for the most part my investigations revealed nothing but discouraging evidences of the degradation of the race. What a contrast between those pinched faces and the piercing eyes, brilliant coloring, and well-rounded forms which aroused my admiration a year later in the _Mellà_ of Tangiers and Fez!