14 TRAVELS I^J UPPER 



tions for all the inhabitants of the East. They had 

 very great allurements in my eyes also, and indeed 

 there was nothing at Cairo I liked but them. The 

 most perfect tranquillity, the most rigid decency, 

 reigned through the whole enclosure. Although 

 several persons were assembled there, not a word 

 was spoken in the room, around which the beds 

 for repose were arranged, and where you take off 

 and put on your clothes. Every one in calmness, 

 in silence, and in voluptuous enjoyment, ex- 

 perienced those sweet and truly nndefinable sen- 

 sations which delicate pressures could produce. 



The women have their appointed days and hours 

 for visiting the baths. At that period no man dare 

 approach them. Other women appointed to wait 

 on the bathers, cause them to pass successively 

 through all the ceremonies observed in those kind 

 of places, but they are performed with more care 

 and delicacy than among the men. Rose-water is 

 not spared, and the smoke of perfumes mingles it- 

 self with humid vapours. As the women have not, 

 like the men, renounced one of the most beautiful 

 ornaments of nature, the care of their bead- dress is 

 one of those most attended to in the toilet of the 

 baths. To cleanse their hair, they make use of a 

 kind of clay which is brought express from Turkey, 

 and which they bedew with sweet-scented waters. 

 But it is not solely a motive of health, or the desire, 

 of cleanliness, which tempts them to visit the baths : 



they 



