crowd clapping its hands, disturbed his usually sound sleep.
At the end of his drive an unpleasant surprise awaited him. During the last great fire in Stambul, about which Liman had probably read during his trip, the Hotel
Kingston, at which it was his habit to stop, had been burned almost to the ground, but the driver, who of course knew this, had nevertheless carried out his passenger’s
instructions with complete indifference, and without a word had brought him to the site of the hotel which had burned down. Now he calmly got down from the box and
would even have unloaded Liman’s luggage if the latter had not seized him by the shoulder and shaken him, whereupon the driver then let go of the luggage, to be sure,
but as slowly and sleepily as if not Liman but his own change of mind had diverted him from it.
Part of the ground floor of the hotel was still intact and had been made fairly habitable by being boarded over at the top and sides. A notice in Turkish and French
indicated that the hotel would be rebuilt in a short time as a more beautiful and more modern structure. Yet the only sign of this was the work of three day laborers, who
with shovels and rakes were heaping up the rubble at one side and loading it into a small handbarrow.
As it turned out, part of the hotel staff, unemployed because of the fire, was living in these ruins. A gentleman in a black frock coat and a bright red tie at once came
running out when Liman’s carriage stopped, told Liman, who sulkily listened to him, the story of the fire, meanwhile twisting the ends of his long, thin beard around his
finger and interrupting this only to point out to Liman where the fire started, how it spread, and how finally everything collapsed. Limam, who had hardly raised his eyes
from the ground throughout this whole story and had not let go the handle of the carriage door, was just about to call out to the driver the name of another hotel to which
he could drive him when the man in the frock coat, with arms raised, implored him not to go to any other hotel, but to remain loyal to this hotel, where, after all, he had
always received satisfaction. Despite the fact that this was only meaningless talk and no one could remember Liman, just as Liman recognized hardly a single one of the
male and female employees he saw in the door and windows, he still asked, as a man to whom his habits were dear, how, then, at the moment, he was to remain loyal to
the burned-down hotel. Now he learned—and involuntarily had to smile at the idea—that beautiful rooms in private homes were available for former guests of this hotel,
but only for them, Liman need but say the word and he would be taken to one at once, it was quite near, there would be no time lost and the rate—they wished to oblige
and the room was of course only a substitute—was unusually low, even though the food, Viennese cooking, was, if possible, even better and the service even more
attentive than in the former Hotel Kingston, which had really been inadequate in some respects.
“Thank you,” said Liman, and got into the carriage. “I shall be in Constantinople only five days, I really can’t set myself up in a private home for this short space of time,
no, I’m going to a hotel. Next year, however, when I return and your hotel has been rebuilt, I’ll certainly stop only with you. Excuse me!” And Liman tried to close the
carriage door, the handle of which the representative of the hotel was now holding. “Sir,” the latter said pleadingly, and looked up at Liman.
“Let go!” shouted Liman, shook the door and directed the driver: “To the Hotel Royal.” But whether it was because the driver did not understand him, whether it was
because he was waiting for the door to be closed, in any event he sat on his box like a statue. In no case however, did the representative of the hotel let go of the door,