184 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPOUT. 



house, in preference to the large one I had been in 

 the habit of frequenting. When I visited the bath, 

 I found only one person, whom I recognised as a 

 Polish Philhellene lately arrived at Jfauplia. The 

 ceremonies of the Turkish bath are generally known. 

 The bath-keeper found an opportunity of seizing me 

 by the throat the feeling of strangulation was in- 

 stantaneous, but I saw a woman enter with a dagger 

 in her hand and a large towel. After an interval, 

 I found myself stretched on a cold marble floor, 

 and felt the blood trickle from my side ; as I opened 

 my eyes, they fell on the dagger I had seen in 

 the woman's hand lying on the floor, and I heard 

 two persons moving beside me. In an instant I 

 sprang up, seized the dagger, and darted forward 

 through an open door. I found my way to the 

 street door, which was locked, but I saw the key 

 hanging beside it; as I was reaching it down, the 

 man and woman both arrived armed with Turkish 

 sabres weapons utterly useless in such untutored 

 hands, so that I easily defended myself with my 

 dagger until I had opened the door and gained the 

 street. 



The first person I met, as I rushed naked and 

 bleeding into the public street, was George Mauro- 

 michalis, who, after filling the office of president of 

 Greece, was executed, at the age of twenty-six, for 

 the assassination of Count Capodistrias, his succes- 



