On
each side rise the houses, one above the other, each one looking over
the roof of its neighbors. In the neighborhood of the river there is a
good deal of trade. There you will find much moving about of vendors of
wine, with their goatskins bellying out like balloons, and vendors of
water with their buffalo skins, fitted with pipes looking like
elephants' trunks.
Here am I wandering at a venture; but to wander is human, says the
collegians of Bordeaux, as they muse on the quays of the Gironde.
"Sir," says a good little Jew to me, showing me a certain habitation
which seems a very ordinary one, "you are a stranger?"
"Quite."
"Then do not pass this house without stopping a moment to admire it."
"And why?"
"There lived the famous tenor Satar, who sang the _contre-fa_ from his
chest. And they paid him for it!"
I told the worthy patriarch that I hoped he would be able to sing a
_contre-sol_ even better paid for; and I went up the hill to the right
of the Koura, so as to have a view of the whole town.
At the top of the hill, on a little open space where a reciter is
declaiming with vigorous gestures the verses of Saadi, the adorable
Persian poet, I abandon myself to the contemplation of the
Transcaucasian capital.
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