Clients: doctor Ruppel, Mouriez, de La Tour, baron de Gottbert. The first floor corridor is lined with lithographs of Gavarni torn from the Charivari paper. When the Sinai Sheiks come to deal with travelers, the desert costume touches on the wall all that civilization sends here as the most quintessential Parisianism (Bouvaret is a former comedian from the Provinces; he is the one sticking these things on the paneling); the girls, the students from the Quartier Latin, the Bourgeois drown by Daumier stay put while the negro goes by to empty the chamber pots.

A wedding we meet on the street, near the house of Lambert Bey. We meet, behind the Hotel d’Orient, a wedding going by. The small timpani players are on donkeys - children richly dressed, on horses; women in black veils (from the front, it’s like those paper circles where esquires jump, except in black) singing the zagarit; a camel covert in golden piastres; two naked wrestlers, rubbed in oil and in leather pants, but not fighting, only posing; men fighting with wooden swords and shields.

(…)

Evening at the Woman from Trieste. Small street behind the Hotel d’Orient - we are led into a big room - the divan advances above the street. On both sides of the divan, small windows overlooking the street and can not be closed - in front of the divan a big window, frameless and windowless, with an iron grating through which a palm tree could be seen - on a big cushion on the left; two squatting women - on a sort of fireplace, a burner and a bottle of raki. The Triestine came down, small woman, blonde, rubicund. The first woman, big lips, snub, gay, brutal, “un poco mata, signor”, the Triestine tells us; the second, big black eyes, regular nose, look tired and doleful - probably is the mistress of some European in Cairo. She understands a few words of French and knows what the égion d’honneur is (the Triestine was fiercely fearful of the police and that we would make too much noise. Abbas Pasha, who likes men, annoys women a lot; in this public house, one cannot danse, nor make music). She played the goblet drum with her fingers on the table while the other one danced with her belt rolled and tied low on her hips. (…) In the room a little of kittens was disturbed from the cover where I was to lie down. New impression, for me, of this new dress - the muslim woman is barricaded, pants tied and without openings for the hand to banter. She did not remove her little green jacket, with gold embroidery: she gestured to me that her chest was painful - indeed she was coughing; but all the rest was quickly bared. Her tight jacket pushed her breasts together. We lay down on the mat - hard and fresh flesh - bronze buttocks - both labia cut, hair shaved. Feel of her cunt was of dry fat. The whole thing felt of plague and leprosy. She helped me dress up with a childish kindness, taking my things and handing them to me. From time to time she questioned me, three or four words in Arabic, and she was waiting for an answer - strange thing; the eyes lock, the intensity of the look raised. And the look of Joseph in the middle of all this! - Making love through an interpreter.