So it was, indeed. A few minutes after two bleeding heads were held up by the soldiers. Then the gates of the city were opened, and there came forth a crowd of boys, who pursued the executioner with stones for three miles, when he fell fainting to the ground, covered with wounds. The next day it was known that he had been shot by a relation of one of the victims, and buried where he fell. The authorities of Tangiers apparently did not trouble themselves about the matter, since the assassin came back into the city and remained unmolested.
After having been exposed three days, the heads were sent to the Sultan in order that his Imperial Majesty might recognize the promptitude with whichhis orders had been fulfilled. The soldiers who were carrying them met on their way a courier, bearing a pardon, who had been detained by the sudden flooding of a river.
I frequently find merchants of Fez who have been in Italy. Forty or fifty of them go there every year, and many have Moorish or Arab agents in our cities. They go particularly to Upper Italy, where they buy raw silks, damasks, corals, velvets, threads, porcelain, pearls, Venice glass, Genoa playing-cards, and Leghorn muslin. In exchange they carry nothing but wax and wool, for trade in Morocco is much restricted; and it may be said that stuffs, arms, hides, and earthen-ware or pottery are their only productions which attract a European’s attention. The stuffs are made chiefly in Fez and Morocco. There arecaicsfor women, lordly turbans, sashes,foulardsof silk delicately woven with gold and silver, generally in stripes of soft and harmonious colors, very pretty at first sight, but unequal when examined, full of gum, and not wearing well. The red caps, on the contrary, which take the name from Fez, are very fine and durable, and the carpets made at Rabat, Casa Bianca, Morocco, Sciadma, and Sciania are admirable for solidity and richness of color. From Tetuan come in great part the damascened muskets, inlaid with ivory and silver, carved, and set with precious stones, of light and elegant form; and Mechinez, and Fez, and the province of Sus make the swords and daggers which are sometimes of such admirable workmanship.
Hides, the principal source of gain for the country, are well prepared in various provinces, and the scarlet leather of Fez, the yellow of Morocco, and the green of Tafilet, are still worthy of their ancient reputation. In Fez they boast particularly of their enamelled pottery, but it is rare to find the noble purity of form of the antique vase; and their chief merit is a brilliancy of color, and a certain barbaric originality of design which attract the eye but do not satisfy it. There are also in Fez a great number of jewellers and goldsmiths, who make some simple things in very good taste, but few, and of little variety, because the Amalechite rite proscribes the display of precious ornaments, as contrary to Mahometan austerity. More notable than the jewelery is the furniture which comes from Tetuan: book-shelves, clothes-pegs, and little polygonal tea-tables, arched, arabesqued, and painted in many colors; copper vessels also, chased in complicated designs and ornamented with green, red, and blue enamel; and, above all, the mosaics of the pavements and walls, composed in exquisite taste by clever workmen, who form the designs with marvellous precision.
There is no doubt that these people are endowed with admirable faculties, and that their industries would increase immensely, as also their agriculture, which was once so flourishing, if commerce could make them live; but commerce is hampered with a thousand prohibitions, restrictions, monopolies, excessivetariffs, continual modifications and the non-observance of treaties; and, although the European governments have obtained many privileges of late years, these are but small in comparison with what might be brought about, thanks to the wealth and geographical position of the country, under a civil government. The principal trade is that with England, after which come France and Spain, who give cereals, metals, sugar, tea, coffee, raw silk, woollen and cotton cloths, and take wool, hides, fruit, leeches, gum, wax, and a great part of the products of Central Africa. The trade which is carried on by Fez, Taza, and Udjda (and it is not of small importance, though less than that which the neighborhood of the two countries should produce) comprehends, besides carpets, the cloths, belts, thick cords, and all the parts of the Arab and Moorish dress, bracelets and anklets of silver and gold, vases from Fez, mosaics, perfumes, incense, antimony for the eyes,hennafor the nails, and all the other cosmetics used by the fair sex of Africa. Of more importance, more ancient, and more regular, is the commerce with the interior of Africa, for which place every year great caravans go forth, carrying stuffs from Fez, English cloths, Venetian glass, Italian corals, powder, arms, tobacco, sugar, small mirrors from Germany, feathers from Holland, little boxes from the Tyrol, hardware from England and France, and salt, which they get on their way in the Sahara; and their journey is like a travelling fair, where their own merchandiseis exchanged for black slaves, gold dust, ostrich feathers, white gum from Senegal, gold ornaments from Nigritia, which are afterward sent to Europe and the East; black stuffs which are worn on the heads of Moorish women;bezoar, which preserves the Arabs from poison and illness; and many drugs which have been abandoned in Europe, but preserve their ancient value in Africa. Here is, for Europe, the chief importance of Morocco: it is the principal gate of Nigritia; where, being open, the commerce of Europe and that of Central Africa will meet. Meanwhile, civilization and barbarism contend upon the threshold.
The Ambassador has frequent conferences with Sid-Moussa. His principal intent is to obtain from the government of the scherifs certain concessions in trade by which Italy shall be the gainer: more I may not say. These conferences last more than two hours; but the conversation turns but briefly upon the real question in discussion, because the Minister, following a custom which seems traditional in the policy of the government of Morocco, never comes to the point until he has wandered over a hundred extraneous subjects, and when he is dragged to it by force. “Let us talk a little about something entertaining,” he says, in almost a beseeching tone. The weather, health, the water of Fez, the properties of certain tissues, some historical anecdotes, some proverbs, what may be the population of certain states of Europe: all these aremore agreeable subjects than the one which is the purpose of the interview. “What do you say of Fez?” he asked one day; and being answered that it was beautiful, he added: “And it has another merit; it is clean!” Another day he wished to know what was the population of Morocco. But at last, the business must come; and then there are long phrases, hesitations, reticences, silences, a putting forth of doubts when consent is already decided upon, a pretended denial of condescension, a slipping through the fingers, a constant dropping of the subject just as the knot is about to be tightened, and then the eternal expedient “to-morrow.”
The next day, recapitulation of things said the day before, new doubts, restrictions, recognition of equivocations, regrets for not having understood, and for not having been understood, and exhaustion of the interpreter charged with the duty of making things clear. And then it is necessary to wait for the return of the couriers from Tangiers and Tafilet, who have been sent to obtain information—information of little consequence, but which serves to put off the solution of the question for ten days longer. And in fine, three great obstacles to every thing: the fanaticism of the people, the obstinacy of the Ulemas, and the necessity of proceeding cautiously, not exciting attention, with a slowness that looks like immobility. Under these conditions, Job himself might be expected to cry out; but then come the warm pressures of thehand, the sweet smiles, the demonstrations of an irresistible sympathy, and an affection that will only end in death. The most difficult affair is that of the big Moor Schellal, and they say that the fate of his whole life depends upon it; consequently he is for ever at the palace, wrapped in his ample caic, anxious, thoughtful, sometimes with tears in his eyes, and he keeps them fixed upon the Ambassador with a supplicating look, like that of one condemned to death and begging for reprieve. Mohammed Ducali, on the contrary, whose sails are swelled by favoring gales, is gay and sprightly, perfumes himself, smokes, changes his caftan every day, and strews on all sides his soft words, and jests, and smiles. Ah! if it were not for Italian influence, how soon those smiles would be changed into tears of blood!
We are experiencing in these days the truth of what was told us at Tangiers with regard to the effects of the air of Fez. Are these effects produced by the air or by the water? or by the rascally oil; or by the infamous butter; or by all these things together; However it may be, it is a fact that we are all ill. Languor, loss of appetite, prostration of strength, and heaviness of head. And with all these ill-feelings there is a weariness, an irritability, a sort of horror, that in a few days has changed the face of the whole house. Every one longs for departure. We have reached that point, inevitable in all long journeys, at which curiosity is dulled;every thing seems faded: memories of home rise up in crowds; all the longings, kept down at first, are alive and in tumult; and our own country is ever before our eyes. We have had enough of turbans, and black faces, and mosques; we are tired of being stared at by a thousand eyes; bored by this immense masquerade in white at which we have been looking for two months. What would we not give to see pass by, even at a distance, a European lady! to hear the sound of a bell! to see on a wall a printed play-bill! Oh, sweetest memories!
I have discovered among the soldiers of the guard one who has lost his right ear, and am told that it was legally cut off, in presence of witnesses, by another soldier whose ear the first one had mutilated some time before. Such is thelex talionisas it exists in Morocco. Not only has any relation of a person killed the right to kill the assassin on the same day of the week, at the same hour and place where the victim fell, using the same weapon, and striking in the same part of the body; but whoever has been deprived of a limb has the right to deprive his assailant of the same limb. A fact of this nature, accompanied by very singular circumstances, happened some years ago at Mogador, and was related to me by a member of the French Consulate, who knew one of the victims. An English merchant of Mogador was returning to the city on the evening of a market-day, at the moment when the gate by which he was entering was encumberedwith a crowd of country people driving camels and asses. Although the Englishman called out as loud as he could, “Bal-ak! bal-ak!” (Make way!) an old woman was struck by his horse and knocked down, falling with her face upon a stone. Ill fortune would have it that in the fall she broke the two last of her front teeth. She was stunned for an instant, and then rose convulsed with rage, and broke out into insults and ferocious maledictions, following the Englishman to his own door. She then went before the caid, and demanded that in virtue of the law of talion he should order the English merchant’s two front teeth to be broken. The caid tried to pacify her, and advised her to pardon the injury; but she would listen to nothing, and he sent her away with a promise that she should have justice, hoping that when her anger should be exhausted she would herself desist from her pursuit. But, three days having passed, the old woman came back more furious than ever, demanded justice, and insisted that a formal sentence should be pronounced against the Christian.
“Remember,” said she to the caid, “thou didst promise me!”
“Che!” responded the caid. “Dost thou take me for a Christian, that I should be the slave of my word?”
Every day for a month the old woman, athirst for vengeance, presented herself at the door of the citadel, and yelled, and cursed, and made such a noise, that the caid, to be rid of her, was obliged toconsent. He sent for the merchant, explained the case, the right which the law gave the woman, the duty imposed upon himself, and begged him to put an end to the matter by allowing two of his teeth to be removed, any two, although in strict justice they should be two incisors. The Englishman refused absolutely to part with incisors, or eye-teeth, or molars; and the caid was constrained to send the old woman packing, ordering the guard not to let her put her foot in the Casba again.
“Very well,” said she; “since there are none but degenerate Mussulmans here, since justice is refused to a Mussulman woman, mother of scherifs, against an infidel dog, I will go to the Sultan, and we shall see whether the prince of the faithful will deny the law of the Prophet.”
True to her determination, she started on her journey alone, with an amulet in her bosom, a stick in her hand, and a bag around her neck, and made on foot the hundred leagues which separate Mogador from the sacred city of the empire. Arrived at Fez, she sought and obtained audience of the Sultan, laid her case before him, and demanded the right accorded by the Koran, the application of the law of retaliation. The Sultan exhorted her to forgive; she insisted. All the serious difficulties which opposed themselves to the satisfaction of her petition were laid before her; she remained inexorable. A sum of money was offered her, with which she could live in comfort for the rest of her days; she refused it.
“What do I want with your money?” said she; “I am old, and accustomed to live in poverty; what I want is the two teeth of the Christian; I want them, I demand them in the name of the Koran; and the Sultan, prince of the faithful, head of Islamism, father of his subjects, cannot refuse justice to a true believer.”
Her obstinacy put the Sultan in a most embarrassing position; the law was formal, and her right incontestable; and the ferment of the populace, stirred up by the woman’s fanatical declamations, rendered refusal perilous. The Sultan, who was Abd-er-Rhaman, wrote to the English consul, asking as a favor that he would induce his countryman to allow two of his teeth to be broken. The merchant answered the consul that he would never consent. Then the Sultan wrote again, saying that if he would consent he would grant him, as a recompense, any commercial privilege that he chose to ask. This time, touched in his purse, the merchant yielded. The old woman left Fez, blessing the name of the pious Abd-er-Rhaman, and went back to Mogador, where, in the presence of many people, the two teeth of the Nazarene were broken. When she saw them fall to the ground she gave a yell of triumph, and picked them up with a fierce joy. The merchant, thanks to the privileges that had been accorded him, made in the two following years so handsome a fortune that he went back to England, toothless, but happy.
Negro Slave Of Fez.Negro Slave Of Fez.
Negro Slave Of Fez.
Negro Slave Of Fez.
The more I study these Moors, the more I am inclined to believe that the judgment unanimously passed upon them by travellers is not far from the truth, and that they are a race of vipers and foxes—false, pusillanimous, cringing to the powerful, insolent to the weak, gnawed by avarice, devoured by egotism, and burning with the basest passions of which the human heart is capable. How could they be otherwise? The nature of the government and the state of society permit them no manly ambition. They traffic and bargain, but they have no knowledge of the labor that begets fatigue of body and serenity of mind; they are completely ignorant of any pleasure that is derived from the exercise of the intelligence; they take no care for the education of their sons; they have no high aims in life; therefore they give themselves up, with all their souls, and for their whole lives, to the amassing of money; and the time that is left to them from this pursuit they divide between a sleepy indolence that enervates, and sensual pleasures that brutalize them. In this life of effeminacy they naturally become vain, small, malignant, tattling creatures; lacerating each other’s reputation with spiteful rage; lying by habit with an incredible impudence; affecting charitable and pious sentiments, and sacrificing a friend for a scudo; despising knowledge, and accepting the most puerile superstitions; bathing every day, and keeping masses of filth in the recesses of their houses; and adding to all this a satanic pride, concealed,when convenient, under a manner both dignified and humble, which seems the index of an honorable mind. They deceived me in this way at first; but now I am persuaded that the very least of them believes, in the bottom of his heart, that he is infinitely superior to us all. The nomadic Arab preserves at least the austere simplicity of his antique customs, and the Berber, savage as he is, has a warlike spirit, courage, and love of independence. Only these Moors have within them a combination of barbarism, depravity, and pride, and are the most powerful of the populations of the empire. From them come the merchants, theulemas, thetholbas, the caids, the pashas; they possess the rich palaces, the great harems, beautiful women, and hidden treasures. They are recognizable by their fat, their fair complexions, their cunning eyes, their big turbans, their majestic walk, their arrogance, and their perfumes.
We have been to take tea at the house of the Moor Schellal. We entered by a narrow corridor into a small dark court, but beautiful—beautiful and filthy as the filthiest house in the ghetto of Alkazar. Except the mosaics of the pavement and pilasters, every thing was black, encrusted, sticky with dirt. There were two little dark rooms on the ground-floor; round the first-floor ran a light gallery, and on the top was the parapet of the terrace. The big Moor made us sit down before the door of his sleeping-room, gave us tea and sweetmeats, burnedaloes, sprinkled us with rose-water, and presented his children to us—two pretty boys, who came to us white with terror, trembling like leaves under our caresses. On the opposite side of the court there was a black slave-girl of about fifteen, having on only a sort of chemise, which was open at the side as far up as the hip, and confined round the waist with a girdle, the slenderest, the most elegant, the most seductive female creature (I attest it on the head of Ussi) that I had seen in all Morocco. She was leaning against a pilaster with her arms crossed on her bosom, looking at us with an air of supreme indifference. Presently there came out of a small door another black woman, of about thirty years of age, tall in stature, of an austere countenance, and robust figure, straight as a palm-tree; who, as it seemed, must have been a favorite with her master, for she advanced familiarly, whispered some words in his ear, pulled out a small bit of straw that was stuck in his beard, and pressed her hand upon his lips with an action at once listless and caressing that made the Moor smile. Looking up, we saw the gallery on the first-floor and the parapet of the terrace fringed with women’s heads, which instantly disappeared. It was impossible for them all to belong to that house. The visit of the Christians had no doubt been announced in the neighborhood, and friends from other terraces had come over to Schellal’s terrace. Just as we were gazing upward, three ghost-like forms passed by us, their heads entirelyconcealed, and vanished through the small door. They were three friends, who, not being able to come by the terraces, had been forced to resign themselves to enter by the door; and a moment after, their heads appeared above the railing of the gallery. The house, in short, had been converted into a theatre, and we were the spectacle. The veiled spectators prattled, and with much low laughter, popped up their heads, and withdrew them again as if they had flown away. Each one of our movements produced a slight murmur; every time one of us raised his head there was a great tumult in the first row of boxes. It was evident that they were much entertained, that they were gathering material for a month’s conversation, and that they could scarcely contain themselves for delight at finding themselves so unexpectedly in the enjoyment of so strange and rare a spectacle! And we complacently obliged them for about an hour—silent, however, and much bored, an effect produced, after a time, by every Moorish house, however courteous its hospitality.
And then, after you have admired the beautiful mosaics, the handsome slaves, and pretty children, you look about instinctively for the person who is the incarnation of domestic life, who represents the courtesy and honorability of the house, who puts the seal on its hospitality, who gives its tone to the conversations, who represents to your mind the altar of the lares,—you seek, in short, the pearl for this shell; and seeing no one but women who havetheir master’s embraces without his affection, and children of unknown mothers, and the whole house personified in one being only, its hospitality becomes a mere empty ceremony; and in your host, instead of the sympathetic features of an honored friend, you see only the aspect of a sensual and odious egotist.
There is no doubt that these people, if they do not hate us absolutely, at least cannot endure us, and they are not without some good reasons. Being among the descendants of the Moors of Spain, many of them still preserve the keys of cities in Andalusia, and titles to the possession of lands and houses in Seville and Granada, and their aversion to Spaniards is peculiarly acrid, their fathers having been despoiled and driven out by them. All the others nourish a general hatred to all Christians, not only because this hatred is instilled into them in their schools and mosques from their earliest infancy, with the purpose of rendering any commerce with civilized races odious to them, commerce which, scattering ignorance and superstition, would undermine the foundations of the empire; but because they all have in the bottom of their souls a vague suspicion of an expansive, growing, threatening force in the states of Europe, by which, sooner or later, they will be crushed. They hear the rising murmur of the French upon their eastern frontier; they see the Spaniards fortified on their Mediterranean coast; Tangiers is occupied by an advanced guard of Christians;the cities of the west are guarded by a line of European merchants, stretching along the Atlantic coast like a chain of sentinels; ambassadors come into the country from different directions, apparently, to bring gifts to the Sultan, but, in reality, as they believe, to look, and scrutinize, and pry, and corrupt, and prepare the ground; they hear, in short, a perpetual threat of invasion, and imagine this invasion accompanied by all the horrors of hatred and revenge, persuaded as they are, that Christians nourish against Moors the same sentiments which the latter feel toward us. How can they change this aversion into sympathy when they see us, in our tight, immodest costume, dressed in gloomy colors, loaded with note-books, telescopes, mysterious instruments which we direct at every thing, noting all things, measuring all things, wishing to know all things; we, who are always laughing, and never pray; we, who are restless, chattering, drinking, smoking, full of pretentions and meanness, with only one wife, and never a slave in the whole country! And they form a dark idea of Europe, as of immense congeries of turbulent people, where there reigns a feverish life, full of ardent ambitions, unbridled vices, audacious enterprises, and tumult, a dizzy whirl, a confusion as of Babel, displeasing to God and man.
To-day great confusion in the palace, because of the first and unique attempt at amorous conquest made by a Christian among the lower personages ofthe Embassy. This excellent young man, upon whom, as it would seem, the diplomatic austerity of our lives for the last forty days had begun to weigh rather heavily, having seen, I know not whence, a lovely Moor walking in a garden, thought (we all have our weaknesses) that she would never be able to resist the attractions of his fine person; and without a thought of the danger, insinuated himself through some hole in the wall into the forbidden precincts. If, when arrived in the presence of his nymph, he made a declaration of love, or whether he attempted to suppress any preamble, whether the nymph lent a favorable ear, or fled shrieking from the spot, no one knows; for in this country all is mystery. It is known, however, that there suddenly issued from behind the bushes four Moors armed with daggers, two of whom sprang upon them on one side, and two on the other; and that the unfortunate young man would either never have issued from the garden, or would have done so with some holes in his person, if the Caid Hamed-Ben-Kasen Buhammei had not suddenly appeared upon the scene, and with an imperious gesture arrested the four assailants, and given the fugitive time to get back to the palace with a whole skin. The news of the event flew about: there was great excitement, and the culprit received a solemn admonition in the presence of us all, while the commandant, always witty, added on his own account a little sermon which produced a profound impression. “The wivesof others,” said he, “and more especially the wives of Mussulmans, must be let alone; and when one is with a European Embassy in Morocco, one must make up one’s mind not to be a man. For, in Mahometan countries, these woman questions speedily become political questions. It would indeed be a fine responsibility, that of an honest young fellow, who, not having been able to resist an inconsiderate impulse, should drag his country into a war, the consequences of which could not be foreseen.” At this solemn discourse, the poor young man, who already saw the Italian fleet with a hundred thousand fighting men sailing toward Morocco because of him, showed himself so overwhelmed with the sense of his guilt that no further castigation was considered necessary.
I should much like to know what conception these people have of their own military power, and their own valor in war, with respect to the power and bravery of Europeans. But I dare not question them directly on the subject, because they are very ready to take offence, and I fear that my questions might be mistaken for irony or brag. I have succeeded, however, touching lightly and with caution, in picking up something. As to the superiority of our military power they have no doubts; for, if any doubts remained in their minds thirty years since, when they had not yet met with any severe reverses from European armies, the wars with France and Spain, and principally the two famous battles ofIsly and Tetuan, would have dissipated them for ever. But with regard to bravery, it seems to me that they still think themselves much superior to Europeans, whose victories they attribute to their artillery, to discipline, and to what with them takes the place of strategy and tactics, namely, craft; but not at all to their valor. It appears that they do not consider victories gained by these means as real victories, nobly obtained. The common people also add to these the alliance with evil spirits, without which neither artillery nor craft would avail to conquer the Mussulman armies. Certain it is that to the pure-blooded Arabs and to the Berbers, who are the warlike majority in Morocco, bravery cannot be denied, or even the recognition of it restricted to that common and indeterminate courage which in Europe is considered, with chivalric reciprocity, the property of all armies. For even taking into account the nature of the ground and the secret aid of England, the army of Morocco, scattered, badly commanded, badly armed, badly provisioned, could not have confronted, as it did, for nearly a year, with a tenacity unexpected in Europe, the Spanish troops, highly disciplined, and furnished with all the newest offensive weapons, unless they had possessed great bravery in compensation for the military power that they lacked. We may deny the name of true courage to that fanaticism which sends one man against ten, seeking a death that shall open for him the gates of paradise; or to the savagefury which induces a soldier to dash his own brains out against a rock rather than fall into the enemy’s hands; or to the wild rage of a wounded man, who tears the bandages from his wounds and frees himself at once from life and a prison; or to the contempt of pain, the blind audacity, the brutal obstinacy, that seek death without any purpose to serve; but we must admit at least that these are elements of courage, and it is incontestable that this people gave many such tremendous examples to Spain. After two months of warfare the Spanish army had taken but two prisoners, an Arab from the province of Oran, and a lunatic who had presented himself at the outposts; and at the sanguinary battle of Castillejos five men only, and those five wounded, fell into the hands of the victors. Their traditional tactics are to advanceen masseagainst the enemy, to extend themselves rapidly, rush in, fire, and retreat precipitately to reload. In great battles they dispose themselves in half-moon shape, artillery and infantry in the centre, and cavalry at the wings, which seeks to envelop the enemy and catch him between two fires. The supreme head gives a general order, but every inferior chief returns to the assault or retreats when he thinks fit, and the army easily escapes from the control of the head. Indefatigable horsemen, dexterous marksmen, unflinching at a defence, easily thrown into confusion in open ground, they glide like serpents, climb like squirrels, run like goats, pass rapidly from a boldassault to a precipitous flight, and give an exaltation of courage that seems like furious madness, to a confusion and disorder without name. There are still in Morocco men who went mad with terror at the battle of Isly; and it is known that when Marshall Bugeaud began his cannonade, Sultan Abd-er-Rhaman cried out, “My horse! my horse!” and leaping into the saddle fled precipitately, leaving in the camp his musicians, his necromancers, his hunting dogs, the sacred standard, the parasol, and his tea, which the French soldiers found still boiling hot.
I meet so many negroes in the streets of Fez that I sometimes seem to find myself in the city of the Sôudan, and feel vaguely between me and Europe the immensity of the desert of Sahara. From the Sôudan, in fact, the greater part of them come—a little less than three thousand in a year, many of whom are said to die in a short time from homesickness. They are generally brought at the age of eight or ten years. The merchants, before exposing them for sale, fatten them with balls ofcùscùssù, try to cure them, with music, of their homesickness, and teach them a few Arabic words; which last augments their price, which is generally thirty francs for a boy, sixty for a girl, about four hundred for a young woman of seventeen or eighteen who is handsome, and knows how to speak, and has not yet had a child, and fifty or sixty for an old man. The emperor takes five per cent. on the importedmaterial, and has a right to the first choice. The others are sold in the markets of Fez, Mogador, and Morocco, and separately, at auction, in the other cities. They all, without difficulty, embrace the Mohammedan religion, preserving, however, many of their own strange superstitions, and the queer festivals of their native country, consisting of grotesque balls, which last three days and three nights consecutively, accompanied by diabolical music. They serve generally in the houses, are treated with kindness, are for the most part freed in reward for their service, and the way is open for them to the highest offices of state. Here, as elsewhere, it is said that they are now feverishly industrious, now torpidly lazy, sensual as monkeys, astute as foxes, ferocious as tigers, but content with their condition, and in general faithful and grateful to their masters; which, it would seem, is not the case where slavery is harder, as at Cuba, and where the liberty that they enjoy is excessive, as in Europe. The Arab and Moorish women refuse to accept them, and it is rare that a negro marries another than one of his own color; but the men, especially the Moors, not only seek them eagerly as concubines, but marry them as frequently as white women; from which cause comes the great number of mulattoes of all shades who are seen in the streets of Morocco. What strange chances! The poor negro of ten years old, sold in the confines of the Sahara for a sack of sugar and a piece of cloth,may—and the case can be cited—discuss thirty years afterward, as Minister of Morocco, a treaty of commerce with the English Ambassador; and still more possibly, the black girl baby, born in a filthy den, and exchanged in the shade of an oasis for a skin of brandy, may come to be covered with gems, and fragrant with perfumes, and clasped in the arms of the Sultan.
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, melancholyaspect, 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 almostnil. 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 singlecampaign, 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 thechief 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 theduarsand 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 aulema, 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 anescort 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 bycoups de main, ambuscades, nocturnal assaults, feints, and ferocious combats, andwent 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 threwthemselves 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 isin 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 aletter 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 perambulatingjournals. 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 oldwoman, 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 thecaicthat 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 thefixed 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!