I proceeded to explicate both the meaning and derivation of the phrase with a concise synopsis of the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” as recorded in the celebrated collection of Arabic tales, The Thousand and One Nights, a massive, handsomely illustrated volume of which—as translated by the renowned Orientalist, Antoine Galland—had been one of the beloved divertissements of my childhood. Before I could provide my companion with anything more than a superficial conception of this work, however, the venerable manservant—still moving with an alacrity that belied his hoary age—reappeared at the doorway and beckoned us inside.

As we proceeded through the many intricate passageways and commodious chambers that formed the ground floor of the manse, I was struck by the unparalleled eccentricity of the decor, which was marked by the same wild—if fantastic—eclecticism that characterized the façade. In both the selection and arrangement of the embellishments, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little, if any, attention had been paid to what is technically known as keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from objet to objet and rested upon none: neither upon the huge totemic carvings of the untutored inhabitants of Micronesia—nor the mummified felines of the ancient Egyptians, displayed in their ornate sarcophagi—nor the elaborately carved opium pipes of the heathen Chinese. In their sheer variety and strangeness, the multitudinous artifacts filling the house reminded me of nothing so much as the collection of rare and exotic curios to be found at the world-renowned Baltimore Museum.

At length, my companion and I were ushered into an enormous apartment, crammed, like the rest of the house, with a bizarre and promiscuous assortment of bibelots: intricately engraved walrus tusks—shells of tropical cocoa-nuts, chiselled into the form of grotesque human faces—taxidermically preserved infant alligators, arranged in whimsical poses—and much, much more. A capacious chair, or rather throne—whose rosewood arms were carved in the shape of grinning dolphin-heads—occupied one corner of the room. Seated in this imposing piece of furniture was an equally imposing, if rather unsettling, specimen of womanhood, whom I immediately took to be the very personage Crockett and I had come to interview.