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.