Chapter XI: FEZ (4)

For some days, walking about Fez, there presents itself to my mind with obstinate persistence, the image of a great American city, to which people from all parts of the world hasten; one of those cities which represent almost the type of that to which all new cities are slowly conforming themselves, and whose life is, perhaps, an example of that which, in another century, will be the life of all; a city whose image cannot present itself to any European side by side with that of Fez, without exciting a smile of pity, so enormous is the difference which separates them in the road of human progress; and yet, the more I fix my thoughts upon that city, the more I feel conscious of a doubt that saddens me. I see those broad, straight, endless streets, with their long perspectives of gigantic telegraph poles. “It is the hour for closing the workshops and warehouses. Torrents of workmen, workwomen, and children pass on foot, in omni-buses, in tramway cars, almost all following the same direction, toward a distant quarter of the town; and all have the same anxious, melancholy aspect, and seem worn out with fatigue. Dense clouds of coal smoke pour from the innumerable chimneys of the factories, descend into the streets, throw their black shadows over the splendid shop-windows, and the gilded lettering of the signs that cover the houses up to the roofs, and the crowd that, with bent heads and rapid step, swinging their arms, fly silently from the places where all day long they have labored. From time to time the sun parts the dismal veil which industry has spread over the capital of labor; but these sudden and fugitive beams, instead of making it more cheerful, only illuminate the sadness of the scene. All the faces have the same expression. Everybody is in haste to reach home in order to 'economize’ his few hours of repose, after having drawn the largest possible advantage from the long hours of work. Every one seems to suspect a rival in his neighbor. Every one bears the stamp of isolation. The moral atmosphere in which these people live is not charity, it is rivalry. A great number of families live in the hotels, a life which condemns the wife to solitude and idleness. All day long the husband attends to his business out of the house, coming in only at the hour for dinner, which he swallows with the avidity of a famished man. Then he returns to his galley. Boys, at the age of five or six years, are sent to school, they go and come alone, and pass the rest of their time as they please, in the enjoyment of perfect liberty. The paternal authority is almost _nil_. The sons receive no other education than that of the common school, arrive quickly at maturity, and from infancy are prepared for the fatigues and struggles of the over-excited, strained, and adventurous life which is before them. The existence of the man is merely one long and single _campaign_, an uninterrupted succession of combats, marches, and countermarches. The sweetness, the intimacy of the domestic hearth have but a small part in his feverish and militant life. Is he happy? Judging by his sad, wearied, anxious countenance, often delicate and unhealthy, it is to be doubted. The excess of continued work breaks down his strength, forbids him the pleasures of the intellect, and prevents him from communing with his own soul. And the woman suffers even more. She sees her husband but once a day, for half an hour at most, and in the evening, when he returns tired out, and goes to bed; and she cannot lighten the burden which he carries, nor participate in his labors, cares, and pains, because she does not know them; for there is no time for an interchange of thought and feeling between the couple.”

The city is Chicago, and the writer who describes it is the Baron de Hubner, a great admirer of America. Now my doubt is this: I do not know which of the two cities, Fez or Chicago, to compassionate most. I feel, however, that if I were a Moor of Fez, and a Christian should take me into one of these great civilized cities and ask me if I did not envy him, I should laugh in his face.

This morning Selam told me, in his own fashion, the famous history of the bandit Arusi; one of the many tales that go about from mouth to mouth from the sea to the desert; founded, however, on a real and recent fact, many witnesses to which are still living.

A short time after the war with France, Sultan Abd-er-Rhaman sent an army to punish the inhabitants of the Rif, who had burned a French vessel. Among the various sheiks who were ordered to denounce the culprits was one named Sid-Mohammed Abd-el-Djebar, already advanced in years, who, being jealous of a certain Arusi, a bold and handsome youth, placed him, though innocent, in the hands of the general, who sent him to be incarcerated at Fez. But he only remained about a year in prison. After his release he went to Tangiers, remained there some time, and then suddenly disappeared, and for a while no one knew what had become of him. But shortly after his disappearance, there were rumors all over the province of Garb of a band of robbers and assassins which infested the country between Rabat and Laracce. Caravans were attacked, merchants robbed, caids maltreated, the Sultan’s soldiers poniarded; no one dared any more to cross that part of the country, and the few who had escaped alive from the hands of the bandits came back to the town stupefied with terror.

Things remained in this state for a good while, and no one had been able to discover who was the chief of the band, when a merchant from the Rif, attacked one night by moonlight, recognized among the robbers the young Arusi, and brought the news to Tangiers, whence it spread rapidly about the province. Arusi was the chief. Many others recognized him. He appeared in the _duars_ and villages, by day as well as by night, dressed as a soldier, as a caid, as a Jew, as a Christian, as a woman, as a _ulema_, killing, robbing, vanishing, pursued from every quarter, but never taken, always unexpected in his approach, always under a new disguise, capricious, fierce, and indefatigable; and he never went very far away from the neighborhood of the citadel El Mamora; a fact which no one could understand. The reason was this: the caid of the citadel El Mamora was no other than the old sheik, Sid-Mohammed Abd-el-Djebar, who had placed Arusi in the hands of the Sultan’s general.

At that very time Sid-Mohammed had just given his daughter in marriage, a girl of marvellous beauty, named Rahmana, to the son of the pashà of Salè, who was called Sid-Ali, The nuptial feasts were celebrated with great pomp, in the presence of all the rich young men of the province, who came on horseback, armed, and dressed in their best, to the citadel El Mamora; and Sid-Ali was to conduct his bride to Salè, to his father’s house. The cortege issued from the citadel at night. It had to pass through a narrow defile formed by two chains of wooded hills and downs. First went an escort of thirty horsemen; behind these, Rahmana, on a mule, between her husband and her brother; behind her, her father, the caid, and a crowd of relations and friends.

They entered the defile. The night was serene, the bridegroom held Rahmana by the hand, the old caid smoothed his beard; all was cheerful and unsuspecting.

Suddenly there burst upon the stillness of the night a formidable voice, which cried:—

“Arusi salutes thee, O Sheik Sid-Mohammed Abd-el-Djebar!”

At the same moment, from the top of the hill, thirty muskets flashed, and thirty shots rang out. Horses, soldiers, friends and relations fell wounded or dead, or took to flight; and before the caid and Sid-Ali, who were untouched, could recover from their bewilderment, a man, a fury, a demon, Arusi himself, had seized Rahmana, placed her before him on his horse, and fled with the speed of the wind toward the forest of Mamora.

The caid and Sid-Ali, both resolute men, instead of giving way to a vain despair, took a solemn oath never to shave their heads until they had been fearfully avenged. They demanded and obtained soldiers from the Sultan, and began to give chase to Arusi, who had taken refuge with his band in the great forest of Mamora, It was a most fatiguing warfare, carried on by _coups de main_, ambuscades, nocturnal assaults, feints, and ferocious combats, and went on for more than a year, driving, little by little, the band of marauders into the centre of the forest. The circle grew closer and closer. Many of Arusi’s men were already dead with hunger, many had fled, many had been killed fighting. The caid and Sid-Ali, as their vengeance seemed to draw near, became more ferocious in its pursuit; they rested neither night nor day, they breathed only for revenge. But of Arusi and Rahmana they could learn nothing. Some said they were dead, some that they had fled, some that the bandit had first killed the woman and then himself. The caid and Sid-Ali began to despair, because the further they advanced into the forest, and the thicker the trees, higher and more intricate became the bushes, the vines, the brambles, and the junipers; so that the horses and dogs could no longer force a passage through them. At last one day, when the two were walking in the forest almost discouraged, an Arab came toward them and said that he had seen Arusi hidden in the reeds, on the river-bank at the extremity of the wood. The caid hastily called his men together, and dividing them into two companies, sent one to the right and the other to the left, toward the river. After some time, the caid was the first to see, rising from the midst of the reeds, a phantom, a man of tall stature and terrible aspect—Arusi. Everybody rushed toward that point, they searched in vain, Arusi was not there. “He has crossed the river!” shouted the caid. They threw themselves into the stream, and gained the opposite bank. There they found some footprints, and followed them, but after a little, they failed. Suddenly the horsemen broke into a gallop along the river brink. At the same moment the attention of the caid was drawn to three of his dogs, who had stopped, searching, near a clump of reeds. Sid-Ali was the first to run to the spot, and he found near the reeds a large ditch, at the bottom of which were some holes. Jumping into the ditch, he introduced his musket into one of the holes, felt it pushed back, and fired; then calling the caid and the soldiers, they searched here and there, and found a small round aperture in the steep bank just above the water. Arusi must have entered by that opening. “Dig!” shouted the caid. The soldiers ran for picks and shovels to a neighboring village, and digging, presently came upon a sort of arch in the earth, and under it a cave.

At the bottom of the cave was Arusi, erect, motionless, pale as death. They seized him; he made no resistance. They dragged him out; he had lost his left eye. He was bound, carried to a tent, laid on the ground, and as a first taste of vengeance, Sid-Ali cut off one by one all the toes of his feet, and threw them in his face. This done, six soldiers were set to guard him, and Sid-Ali and the caid withdrew to another tent, there to arrange what tortures they should inflict before cutting off his head. The discussion was prolonged; for each one tried to propose some more painful torture, and nothing seemed horrible enough; the evening came, and nothing was decided. The decision was put off until the next morning, and they separated.

An hour afterward the caid and Ali were asleep, each in his tent; the night was very dark, there was not a breath of wind, not a leaf moving; nothing was heard but the murmur of the river, and the breathing of the sleeping men. Suddenly a formidable voice broke the silence of the night:—

“Arusi salutes thee, O Sheik Sid-Mohammed Abd-el-Djebar!”

The old caid sprang to his feet and heard the rapid beat of a horse’s feet departing. He called his soldiers, who came in haste, and shouted, “My horse! my horse!” They sought his horse, the most superb animal in the whole of Garb; it was gone. They ran to the tent of Sid-Ali: he was stretched to the ground, dead, with a poniard stuck in his left eye. The caid burst into tears; the soldiers went off on the track of the fugitive. They saw him for an instant, like a shadow; then lost him; again saw him; but he sped like the lightning, and vanished not to be seen again. Nevertheless they continued to follow, all the night, until they reached a thick wood where they halted to await the dawn. When daylight appeared they saw far off the caid’s horse approaching, tired out and all bloody, filling the air with lamentable neighings. Thinking that Arusi must be in the wood, they loosed the dogs and advanced sword in hand. In a few minutes they discovered a dilapidated house half-hidden among the trees. The dogs stopped there. The soldiers came to the door, and levelling their muskets let them fall with a cry of amazement. Within the four ruined walls lay the corpse of Arusi, and beside it, a lovely woman, splendidly dressed, with her hair loose on her shoulders, was binding up his bleeding feet, sobbing, laughing, and murmuring words of despair and love. It was Rahmana. They took her to her father’s house, where she remained three days without speaking one word, and then disappeared. She was found some time afterward in the ruined house in the wood, scratching up the earth with her hands, and calling on Arusi. And there she stayed. “God,” said the Arabs, “had called her reason back to Himself, and she was a saint.” Whether she is still living or not, no one knows. She was certainly living twenty years ago, and was seen in her hermitage by M. Narcisse Cotte, attached to the Consulate of France at Tangiers, who told her story.

There is not now a corner of Fez that is unknown to us; and yet it seems as if we had only arrived yesterday, so varied is the aspect of the place, so much does every object revive in us the sense of our solitude, so little do we become habituated to the curiosity that we create. And this curiosity is in no wise lessened, although by this time we have been seen over and over again by every native of Fez. Timidity, on the other hand, is lessened, and antipathy, perhaps, a little; the children come nearer and touch our garments, to feel what they are made of; the women look at us with forbidding glances, but they no longer turn back when they see us coming; curses are more rare, the soldiers do not use their sticks so much, and the blows that Ussi received were, it is to be hoped, the first and last blows with a fist that I shall have to report in Italy. And although, in our walks through the city, we are followed and preceded by a crowd, I think we could now go out alone without danger of death. Already the people, according to the soldier’s testimony, have given each of us a name, according to Moorish custom: the doctor is “the man with the spectacles”; the vice-consul is “the man with the flat nose”; the captain is “the man with the black boots”; Ussi is “the man with the white handkerchief”; the commandant, “the man with the short legs”; Biseo, “the man with the red hair”; Morteo, “the velvet man,” because he is dressed in velvet; and myself, “the man with the broken shoe,” because a pain in my foot obliged me to make a cut in my boot. They comment much upon our doings, it appears, and say that we are all ugly, not one accepted, not even the cook, who received this intelligence with a laugh of scorn, and clapped his hand on a pocket in his vest, where he had a letter from his sweetheart. And it seems to me that they find us, or pretend to find us ridiculous, because, in the streets, they laugh with a certain ostentation every time that one of us slips, or hits his head against a branch of a tree, or loses his hat. Nevertheless, and despite the variety of the landscape, this population all of one color, and without apparent distinction of rank, this silence broken only by an eternal rustle of slippers and mantles, these veiled women, these blind, mute houses, this mysterious life,—all end by producing a dreadful tedium. We must be within doors at sunset, and may not go out again. With the daylight ceases all trade, every movement, every sign of life; Fez is no more than a vast necropolis, where if perchance a human voice is heard, it is the howl of a madman, or the shriek of one who is being murdered; and he who insists upon going about at any cost, must be accompanied by a patrol with loaded muskets, and a company of carpenters who at every three hundred paces must knock down a gate that stops the way. In the daytime the city supplies no news beyond some woman found in the street with a dagger in her heart, or the departure of a caravan, or the arrival of a governor or vice-governor of some province who has been thrown into prison, the bastinado administered to some dignitary, a festival in honor of some saint, or other things of the same character brought to us in general by Mohammed Ducali or Schellal, who are our two perambulating journals. And these events, with what I daily see, and the singular life I lead, give me at night such strangely intricate dreams of severed heads, and deserts, of harems, prisons, Fez, Timbuctoo, and Turin, that when I wake in the morning, it takes me some minutes to find out what world I am in.

How many beautiful, grotesque, horrible, absurd, and strange figures will live in my memory for ever! My head is full of them, and when I am alone I make them pass before me one by one, like the figures in a magic lantern, with inexpressible pleasure. There is Sid-Buker, the mysterious being who comes three times every day, wrapped in a great mantle, with head down, half-closed eyes, pale as death, stealthy as a spectre, to confer secretly with the Ambassador, and vanishes like a figure in a phantasmagoria, without any one observing him. There is the favorite Sid-Moussa, a handsome young mulatto, graceful as a girl, elegant as a prince, fresh and smiling, who goes leaping up and down the stairs, and salutes you with a sort of coquetry, bowing profoundly and extending his hand as if he were throwing kisses. There is a soldier of the guard, a Berber, born in the Atlas Mountains, a countenance that one cannot see without a shudder, and who fixes upon me a cold, perfidious, immovable glance, as if he meant to kill me; and the more I try to avoid him the more I meet him, and he seems to divine the dread with which he inspires me, and to take a satanic pleasure in it. There is a decrepit old woman, whom I saw in the door of a mosque, naked as she was born, except for a formless rag about her hips, with her head as bald as the palm of my hand, and a body so deformed that I made an exclamation of horror, and was disturbed for some time by the sight of her. There is the mischievous Moorish woman, who, entering her house as we were passing by, threw off in furious haste the _caic_ that covered her, and giving us a glimpse of her handsome, straight, and well-made figure, and a sparkling glance, shut the door. There is the very old shopkeeper, with a face at once ridiculous and frightful, so bent over that when he stands in the back of his dark niche he seems almost to touch his toes with his chin; he keeps only one eye open, and that is hardly visible; and every time I pass his shop, and look in at him, that eye opens large and round, and shines with a sort of mocking smile that gives me a kind of anxious feeling. There is the beautiful little Moorish girl of ten years old, with her hair loose about her shoulders, dressed in a chemise bound round the waist with a green scarf, who, in attempting to jump from one terrace to another lower one, got caught by her chemise upon the corner of a brick, and was held dangling; and she, knowing that she was seen from the palace of the Embassy, and unable to get up or down, raised the most despairing shrieks, and all the women in the house came, shaking with laughter, to her assistance. There is the gigantic mulatto, a madman, who, pursued by the fixed idea that the Sultan’s soldiers are seeking him to cut his hand off, flies through the streets like some wild thing held in chase, convulsively shaking his right arm as if it were already mutilated, and giving the most frightful yells, which can be heard from one end of the city to the other. There are many, many more; but the one who rises oftenest before my memory is a negro, of about fifty years of age, a servant of the palace, a little more than a yard high, and a little less than a yard wide, a contented spirit, who is always smiling and twisting his mouth toward his right ear; the most grotesque, the most absurdly ridiculous figure that ever appeared under the vault of heaven; and it is of no use for me to bite my fingers, and tell myself that it is ignoble to laugh at human deformity, and shame myself in many ways, the laugh breaks out in spite of me—there must be in it some mysterious intention of Providence—it must break out. And—I really cannot help it—the idea presents itself, what a capital pipe-bowl he would make!

As the day of departure draws near, the merchants come in crowds to the palace, and buying goes on with fury. The rooms, the court, and the gallery have taken the aspect of a bazaar. Everywhere long rows of vases, embroidered slippers, cushions, carpets, caics. Every thing in Fez that is most gilded, most arabesqued, most dear in price, is passed before our eyes. And it is worth while to see how they sell, these people, without a word, without a flitting smile, only making the sign of yes or no with the head, and going away, having sold or not having sold, with the same automaton faces that they brought. Above all, the painters’ room is fine, converted into a great _bric-à-brac_ shop, full of saddles, stirrups, guns, caftans, ragged scarfs, pottery, barbaric ornaments, old girdles of women, come from heaven knows where, that have perhaps felt the pressure of the Sultan’s arms, and next year will appear in some grand picture at Naples or New York. One kind of thing only is wanting, namely, antique objects, records of the various peoples who have conquered and colonized Morocco; and although it is known that such are often found underground and among the ruins, it is not possible to get them, because every object so found has to be carried to the authorities, and whoever finds one hides it; and the authorities, ignorant of their value, destroy or sell as useless material the little that finds its way to them. In this way, a few years ago, a bronze horse and some small bronze statues, which were found in a well near the remains of an aqueduct, were broken up and sold for old copper to a Jew dealer in second-hand goods.

To-day I had a warm discussion with a merchant of Fez, with the intention of finding out what opinion the Moors held of European civilization; and for that reason I did not trouble myself to refute his arguments, except when it was necessary to give him line. He is a handsome man of forty, of an honest and severe countenance, who has visited, in his commerce, the principal cities of Western Europe, and who lived a good while at Tangiers, where he learned some Spanish. I had exchanged a few words with him some days ago, _à propos_ of a small piece of stuff woven of silk and gold, which he pretended to be worth ten _marenghi_. But to-day, attacking him upon the subject of his travels, a conversation ensued which his companions listened to with astonishment, although they could not understand it. I asked him then what impression the great cities of Europe had made upon him; not expecting, however, to hear any great expression of admiration, because I knew, as everybody knows, that of the four or five hundred merchants of Morocco who go every year to Europe the greater part return to their own country more stupidly fanatical than at first, when they do not return more rascally and vicious; and that if they were all amazed at the splendor of our cities, and at the marvels of our industries, not one of them would be touched in the soul, moved in the mind, spurred on to imitate, to attempt; not one persuaded of the complex inferiority of his own country; and certainly not one, even if he experienced such sentiments, who would be ready to express them, and still less to diffuse them, through the fear of calling down upon himself the accusation of being a renegade Mussulman and an enemy to his country.

“What have you to say,” I asked, “of our great cities?”

He looked fixedly at me, and answered coldly: “Large streets, fine shops, handsome palaces, fine offices—and all clean.”

With this he appeared to think that he had said all that could be said in our honor.

“Did you see nothing else that was handsome and good?” I asked.

He looked at me as if to inquire what I supposed he was likely to have found.

“Is it possible” (I insisted) “that a reasonable man like yourself, who has seen countries so wonderfully different and superior to his own, does not speak of them at least with astonishment, at least with the vivacity with which a boy from a _duar_ would speak of a pashà’s palace? What does astonish you then in the world? What kind of people are you? Who can comprehend you?”

“_Perdóne Usted_,” he answered, coldly; “in my turn I do not understand you. When I have told you every thing in which I think you superior to us, what do you wish more? Do you wish me to say what I do not think? I tell you that your streets are wider than ours, your shops finer, your palaces richer; it seems to me that I have said all. I will say one thing more: that you know more than we do, because you have books and read.”

I made a gesture of impatience.

“Do not be impatient, _caballero_,” he went on quietly; “you will acknowledge that the first duty of a man, the first thing which renders him estimable, and that in which it is of the utmost importance that a country should be superior to other countries, is honesty; will you not? Very well, in the matter of honesty I do not at all believe that you are superior to us. And that is one thing.”

“Gently. Explain first what you mean by honesty.”

“Honesty in trade, _caballero_. The Moors, for example, in trade sometimes deceive the Europeans, but you Europeans deceive us Moors much more often.”

“The cases are rare,” I answered, for the sake of saying something.

“Cases rare!” he exclaimed, warmly. “Cases of every-day occurrence” (and here I would like to report exactly his broken, concise, and childish language). “Proof! Proof! I at Marseilles. I am at Marseilles. I buy cotton. I choose the thread, thick like this. I say: this number, this stamp, this quantity, send. I pay, I depart, arrive at Morocco, receive cotton, open, look, same number, same stamp—thread three times smaller! good for nothing! loss, thousands of francs! I run to Consulate—nothing. _Otro_, another. Merchant of Fez orders blue cloth in Europe, so many pieces, so wide, so long, agreed, paid. Receives cloth, opens, measures: first pieces right; under, shorter; last, half a yard shorter! not good for cloaks, merchant ruined. _Otro, otro._ Merchant of Morocco orders in Europe, thousand yards gold galloon for officers, and sends money. Galloon comes, cut, sewed, worn—copper! _Y otros, y otros, y otros!_” With this he lifted his face to the sky, and then turning abruptly to me: “More honest you?”

I repeated that these could only be exceptional cases. He made no reply.

“More religious you?” he asked then, shortly. “No!” and after a moment: “No! Enough to go once into one of your mosques.”

“You say,” he went on, encouraged by my silence, “in your country there are fewer _matamientos_ (murders)?” Here I should have been embarrassed to answer. What would he have said if I had confessed that in Italy alone there are committed three thousand homicides a year, and that there are ninety thousand prisoners on trial and condemned?

“I do not believe it,” he said, reading my answer in my eyes. Not feeling myself secure upon this ground, I attacked him with the usual arguments against polygamy.

He jumped as if I had burnt him.

“Always that!” he cried, turning red to his very ears. “Always that! as if you had one woman only! and you want to make us believe it! One wife is really yours, but there are those of _los otros_, and those who are _de todos y de nadie_, of everybody and nobody. Paris! London! Cafés full, streets full, theatres full. _Verguenza!_ and you reproach the Moors!”

So saying, he pulled the beads of his rosary through his trembling fingers, and turned from time to time with a faint smile to make me understand that his anger was not against me, but against Europe.

Seeing that he took this question rather too much to heart, I changed the subject, and asked him if he did not recognize greater convenience in our manner of living. Here he was very comic. He had his arguments all ready.

“It is true,” he answered, with an ironical accent; “it is true. Sun? Parasol. Rain? Umbrella. Dust? Gloves. To walk? A stick. To look? An eye-glass. To take the air? A carriage. To sit down? Elastic cushions. To eat? Music. A scratch? The doctor. Death? A statue: _Eh!_ how many things you have need of! What men, _por Dios_! What children!”

In short, he would not leave me any thing. He even laughed at our architecture.

“_Che! che!_” said he, when I talked of the comfort of our houses. “There are three hundred of you living in one house, all a-top of one another, and then you go up, and up, and up—and there is no air, and no light, and no garden!”

Then I spoke of laws, of government, of liberty, and the like; and as he was a man of intelligence, I think I succeeded, if not in making him understand all the differences in these respects between his country and ours, at least, in introducing some gleams of light into his mind. Seeing that he could not meet me on this ground, he suddenly changed the subject, and looking at me from head to foot, said, smiling, “_Mal vestidos_” (badly dressed).

I replied that dress was of small importance, and asked him if he did not recognize our superiority in this, that instead of sitting for hours idly, with our legs crossed on a mattress, we employed our time in many useful and amusing ways.

He gave me a more subtle answer than I had expected. He said that it did not appear to him a good sign to have need of so many ways of passing the time. Life alone, then, was for us a punishment that we could not rest an hour doing nothing, without amusement, without wearing ourselves out in the search for entertainment? Were we afraid of ourselves? Had we something in us which tormented us?

“But see,” I said, “what a dull spectacle your city presents, what solitude, what silence, what misery. You have been in Paris. Compare the streets of Paris with the streets of Fez.”

Here he was sublime. He sprang to his feet laughing, and, more in gesture than in words, gave a jesting description of the spectacle which is presented by our city streets: “Come, go, run; carts here, wheelbarrows there; a deafening noise; drunken men staggering along; gentlemen buttoning up their coats to save their purses; at every step a guard, who looks as if at every step he saw a thief; old people and children who are in constant danger of being crushed by the carriages of the rich; impudent women, and even girls, horror! who give provoking glances, and even nudge the young men with their elbows; everybody with a cigar in his mouth; on every side people going into shops, to eat, to drink, to have their hair dressed, to look in mirrors, to put on gloves; and dandies planted before the doors of the cafés to whisper in the ears of other people’s wives who are passing; and that ridiculous manner of saluting, and walking on the toes, and swinging and jumping about; and then, good heavens, what womanish curiosity!” And touching this point he grew warm, and told how one day, in an Italian city, having gone out in his Moorish dress, in a moment there had gathered a crowd, who ran before and behind him, shouting and laughing, and would scarcely let him walk, so that he had to go back to his hotel and change his dress. “And that is the way they act in your country!” he went on. “That they do so here is not surprising, for they never see a Christian; but in your country, where they know how we are dressed, because they have pictures of us, and send their painters here with machines to take our portraits; among you who know so much, do you think that such things ought to happen?”

After which he smiled courteously, as if to say, “All this is no reason why we should not be friends.”

Then the conversation turned upon European manufactures, railways, telegraphs, and great works of public utility; and of these he allowed me to talk without interruption, assenting from time to time with a nod.

When I had finished, however, he sighed and said, “After all, what are all these things worth if we must all die?”

“Finally,” I concluded, “you would not change your condition for ours?”

He stood a moment thoughtful, and replied: “No, because you are no longer-lived than we are, nor are you more healthy, nor better, nor more religious, nor more contented. Leave us, then, in peace. Do not insist that everybody should live as you do, and be happy according to your ideas. Let us all stay in the circle where Allah has placed us. For some good purpose Allah stretched the sea between Europe and Africa. Let us respect His decree.”

“And do you believe,” I demanded, “that you will always remain as you are; that little by little we shall not make you change?”

“I do not know,” he answered. “You have the strength, you will do what you please. All that is to happen is already written. But whatever happens Allah will not abandon His faithful people.”

With this he took my hand, pressed it to his heart, and went majestically away.

This morning at sunrise I went to see the review which the Sultan holds three times a week in the square where he received the Embassy.

As I went out at the gate of the Nicchia del Burro, I had a first taste of the manœuvres of the artillery. A troop of soldiers, old, middle-aged, and boys, all dressed in red, were running behind a small cannon drawn by one mule. It was one of the twelve guns presented by the Spanish government to Sultan Sid-Mohammed after the war of 1860. Every now and then the mule slipped, or turned aside, or stopped, and the whole band began to yell and to strike at her, dancing and giggling, as if it was a carnival car they were conducting. In a distance of about a hundred paces they stopped ten times. Now the little bucket fell off, now the rammer, now something else; for every thing was hung on the carriage. The mule zig-zagged along at her own caprice, or rather wherever the cannon pushed her in coming down over the inequalities of the ground; everybody gave orders which no one obeyed; the big ones cuffed the small ones, the small ones cuffed the smaller ones, and they all cuffed each other; and the cannon remained pretty much in the same place. It was a scene to have thrown General La Marmora into a tertian fever.

On the left bank of the river there were about two thousand foot-soldiers, some lying on the ground, some standing about in groups. In the square enclosed between the walls and the river, the artillery; four guns were firing at a mark; behind the guns stood some soldiers, and a tall figure in white—the Sultan. From the place where I stood, however, I could scarcely distinguish his outline. He seemed from time to time to speak to the artillerymen, as if he were directing them. On the opposite side of the square, near the bridge, there was a crowd of Moors, Arabs, and blacks, men and women, people from the city and country-people, gentlemen and peasants, all assembled together, and waiting, I was told, to be called one by one before the Sultan, from whom they wished favor or justice; for the Sultan gives audience three times a week to whosoever wishes to speak with him. Some of these poor people had, perhaps, come from distant places to complain of the exactions of the governor, or to beg for pardon for their relatives in prison. There were ragged women and tottering old men; all the faces were weary and sad, and upon them could be read both impatient desire and dread to appear before the prince of true believers, the supreme judge, who in a few minutes, with few words, would perhaps decide the fate of their whole lives. I could not see that they had any thing at their feet or in their hands, and for this reason I believe that the reigning Sultan has discontinued the custom, which formerly existed, of accompanying every petition with a present, which was never refused, however small, and consisted sometimes of a pair of fowls or a dozen of eggs. I walked about among the soldiers. The boys were divided into companies of thirty or forty each, and were amusing themselves by running after one another and playing a sort of leap-frog. In some of these groups, however, the diversion consisted in a sort of pantomime, which, when I understood its meaning, made me shudder. They were representing the amputation of the hands, decapitation, and other kinds of punishment, which they had doubtless often witnessed. One boy represented the caid, another the victim, and a third the executioner; the victim, when his hand was cut off, made believe to plunge the stump into a vessel of pitch; another pretended to pick up the hand and throw it to the dogs; and the spectators all laughed.

The gallows-bird faces of the greater part of these youthful soldiers are not to be described. They were of all shades of color, from ebony black to orange yellow; and not one of them, even among the youngest, had preserved the ingenuous expression of childhood. All had something hard, impudent, cynical, in their eyes, that inspired pity rather than anger. No great perspicacity is necessary to understand that they could not be otherwise. Of the men, the greater part of them were dozing, stretched out on the ground; others were dancing negro dances in the midst of a circle of spectators, and making all sorts of jokes and grimaces; others, again, fencing with sabres, in the same way as at Tangiers, springing about with the action of rope-dancers. The officers, among them many renegades, who were to be recognized by their faces, their pipes, and a certain something of superior care in their dress, walked about apart, and when I met them, turned their eyes away. Beyond the bridge, in a place apart, about twenty men, muffled in white mantles, were lying on the ground, one beside the other, motionless as statues. I drew near, and saw that they all wore heavy chains on wrist and ankle. They were persons condemned for common offences, who were dragged about by the army, and thus pilloried in the sight of all. As I approached they all turned, and fixed upon me a look that made me retreat at once.

I left the soldiers, and went to rest myself under the shade of a palm-tree, on a rising ground, whence I could command the whole plain. I had been there but a few minutes, when I saw an officer detach himself from a group, and come slowly toward me, looking carelessly about him, and humming a tune, as if to avoid notice. He was a short, stout man of about forty, wearing a sort of Zouave dress, with a fez, and without arms.

When I saw him near, I had a sensation of disgust. Never have I seen outside of the assize court a more perfidious countenance. I would have sworn to his having at least ten murders on his conscience, accompanied by assaults on the person.

He stopped at a couple of paces from me, fixed two glassy eyes upon me, and said, coldly, “_Bon jour, monsieur_.”

I asked him if he were a Frenchman. “Yes,” he replied. “I am from Algiers. I have been here seven years. I am a captain in the army of Morocco.”

Not being able to compliment him on his position, I kept silence.

“_C´est comme ça_,” he continued, speaking quickly. “I came away from Algiers because I could not bear the sight of it any more. _J´étais obligé de vivre dans un cercle trop étroit_” (he meant, perhaps, the halter). “European life did not suit my tastes. I felt the need of change.”

“And are you more contented now?” I inquired.

“Most content,” he answered, with affectation. “The country is lovely, Muley-el-Hassan is the best of sultans, the people are kind, I am a captain, I have a little shop, I exercise a small trade, I hunt, I fish, I make excursions into the mountains, I enjoy complete liberty. I would not go back to Europe, you see, for all the gold in the world.”

“Do you not wish to see your own country again? Have you forgotten even France?”

“What is France to me!” he replied. “For me France has no existence. Morocco is my country.” And he shrugged his shoulders.

His cynicism revolted me; I could scarcely believe it; I had the curiosity to probe him a little more deeply.

“Since you left Algeria,” I asked, “have you had no news of events in Europe?”

“_Pas un mot_,” he answered. “Here nobody knows any thing, and I am very glad not to know any thing.”

“You do not know, then, that there has been a great war between France and Prussia?”

He started. “_Qui a vaincu?_” he asked, quickly, fixing his eyes upon me.

“Prussia,” I replied.

He made a gesture of surprise. I told him in a few words of the disasters that had befallen France,—the invasion, the taking of Paris, the loss of the two provinces. He listened with his head bent down and his eyebrows knit; then he roused himself and said, with a kind of effort, “_C´est égal_—I have no country, it is no affair of mine,” and he bent his head again. I observed him steadily, and he saw it. “Adieu, Monsieur,” he said, abruptly, in an altered voice, and walked quickly away.

“All is not dead within him yet!” I thought, and was glad.

Meantime the artillery had ceased its fire, the Sultan had retired under a white pavilion at the foot of a tower, and the soldiers began to defile before him, unarmed, and one by one, at about twenty paces one from the other. As there was not beside the Sultan, or in front of the pavilion any officer to read the names, as with us, in order to certify the existence of every soldier on the rolls (and I am told there are no rolls in the army of Morocco), I could not understand the purpose of the review, unless it was for the Sultan’s amusement; and I was tempted to laugh. But, upon second thoughts, the primitive and poetic idea in the sight of that African monarch, high-priest, an absolute prince, young, gentle, and in all simplicity standing three hours alone in the shadow of his tent, and three times in every week seeing his soldiers passing before him one by one, and listening to the prayers and lamentations of his unhappy subjects inspired me instead with a feeling of respect. And since it was the last time that I should see him, I felt a sudden rush of sympathy toward him as I turned away. “Farewell,” I thought, “handsome and noble prince!” and as his gracious white figure disappeared for ever from my eyes, I felt a sensation in my breast as if, in that moment, it had been stamped upon my heart.

The ninth of June: the last day of the sojourn of the Italian Embassy at Fez. All the Ambassador’s demands have been conceded, the affairs of Ducali and Schellal arranged, visits of leave-taking made, the last dinner of Sid-Moussa submitted to, the usual presents from the Sultan received: a fine black horse, with an enormous green velvet saddle embroidered with gold for the Ambassador; gilded and damascened sabres to the officials of the Embassy; a mule to the second dragoman. The tents and boxes were sent forward this morning, the rooms are empty, the mules are ready, the escort awaits us at the gate of Nicchia del Burro, my companions are walking up and down the court, expecting the signal for departure, and I, seated for the last time upon the edge of my imperial bed, note down in a book upon my knee my last impressions of Fez. What are they? What is left at last at the bottom of my soul by the spectacle of this people, this city, this state of things? If my thought penetrates at all under the pleasing impressions of wonder and gratified curiosity, I find a mingling of diverse sentiments, which leave my mind uncertain. There is a feeling of pity for the decay, the debasement, the agony of a warlike and knightly race, who left so luminous a track in the history of science and art, and now have not even the consciousness of their past glory. There is admiration for what remains in them of the strong and beautiful, for the virile and gracious majesty of their aspect, dress, demeanor, and ceremonies; for every thing that their sad and silent life retains of its antique dignity and simplicity. There is displeasure at the sight of so much barbarism at so short a distance from civilization, and that this civilization should have so disproportionate a force in rising and expanding, that in so many centuries, and always growing on its own ground, it has been unable to cross two hundred miles of sea. There is anger at the thought that, to the great interest of the barbarism of this part of Africa, the civilized states prefer their own small local and mercantile interests; and diminishing thus in the minds of this people, by the spectacle of their mean jealousies, their own authority and that of the civilization which they desire to spread, render the undertaking always more difficult and slow. Finally, there is a sentiment of vivid pleasure, when I think that in this country another little world has been formed in my brain, populous, animated, full of new personages who will live forever there, whom I can evoke at will, and can converse with them, and live again in Africa. But with this glad feeling comes another which is sad, the inevitable sentiment that throws a shadow over all our serene hours and drops a drop of bitterness into all our pleasures—that which the Moorish merchant expressed when he demonstrated the vanity of the great efforts of civilized people to study, to seek, to discover; and then this beautiful journey seems to me only the rapid passage of a fine scene in the spectacle of an hour, which is life; and my pencil drops from my hand, and a dark discouragement takes possession of me. Ah! the voice of Selam calls me! We must go, then. To return to the tent, to the warlike manœuvres, the wide plains, the great light, the joyous and wholesome life of the encampment. Farewell, Fez! Farewell, sadness! My little African world is again illuminated with rose color.