ite faces and
lovely eyes, turbaned in brilliant gauzes, with draperies of dirty
curtain muslin over tawdry brocaded caftans. Their paler children
swarmed about them, little long-earringed girls like wax dolls dressed
in scraps of old finery, little boys in tattered caftans with
long-lashed eyes and wily smiles, and, waddling in the rear, their
unwieldy grandmothers, huge lumps of tallowy flesh who were probably
still in the thirties.

With them were the men of the family, in black gabardines and
skull-caps, sallow striplings, incalculably aged ancestors,
round-bellied husbands and fathers bumping along like black balloons,
all hastening to the low doorways dressed with lamps and paper garlands
behind which the feast was spread.

One is told that in cities like Fez and Marrakech the Hebrew quarter
conceals flowery patios and gilded rooms with the heavy European
furniture that rich Jews delight in. Perhaps even in the _Mellah_ of
Sefrou, among the ragged figures shuffling past us, there were some few
with bags of gold in their walls and rich stuffs hid away in painted
coffers, but for patios and flowers and daylight there seemed no room in
the dark _bolgia_ they inhabit. No wonder the babies of the Moroccan
ghettos are nursed on date-brandy, and their elders doze away to death
under its consoling spell.

VI

THE LAST GLIMPSE

It is well to bid good-by to Fez at night--a moonlight night for choice.

Then, after dining at the Arab inn of Fez Eldjid--where it might be
inconvenient to lodge, but where it is extremely pleasant to eat
_kouskous_ under a grape-trellis in a tiled and fountained patio--this
pleasure over, one may set out on foot and stray down the lanes toward
Fez Elbali.

Not long ago the gates between the different quarters of the city used
to be locked every night at nine o'clock, and the merchant who went out
to dine in another part of the town had to lodge with his host. Now this
custom has been given up, and one may roam about untroubled through the
old quarters, grown as silent as the grave after the intense life of the
bazaars has ceased at nightfall.

Nobody is in the streets wandering from ghostly passage to passage, one
hears no step but that of the watchman with staff and lantern. Presently
there appears, far off, a light like a low-flying firefly, as it comes
nearer, it is seen to proceed from the _Mellah_ lamp of open-work brass
that a servant carries ahead of two merchants on their w