and has five arches, you look down into the bed
of the Rummel, while the vultures and eagles scream around you, and you
recite the words of the poet El Abdery, who called this river a bracelet
which encircles an arm. The gorge opens out into a beautiful plain rich
with pomegranates, figs and orange trees. The sea is forty-eight miles
away.

The last bey of Constantina, not knowing that he was merely building for
the occupancy of the French governors who were to come after him,
decreed himself, some fifty years ago, a stately pleasure-dome, after
the fashion of Kubla Khan. From the ruins of Constantina, Bona and
Tunis, Ahmed Bey picked up whatever was most beautiful in the way of
Roman marbles and carving. With these he built his halls, while the
Rummel, through caverns measureless to man, ran on below. Some
Frenchman of importance will now-a-days give you the freedom of this
curious piece of Turkish construction, where, among storks and ibises
gravely perched on one stilt, you examine the relics of Roman history,
preserved by its very destroyers, according to the grotesque providence
that watches over the study of archaeology.

[Illustration: BEY'S PALACE, CONSTANTINA.]

You are told how Ahmed, wishing to adorn the walls of his gallery or
loggia with frescoes, of which he had heard, but which he had no artist
capable of executing, whether Arab, Moor or Jew, applied to a prisoner.
The man was a French shoemaker, who had never touched a brush: he vainly
tried to decline the honor, but the bey was inflexible: "You are a vile
liar: all the Christians can paint. Liberty if you succeed, death if you
disobey me."

[Illustration: SHAMPOOING THE ROUMI.]

Extremely nervous was the hand which the painter _malgre lui_ applied to
the unlooked-for task. From the laborious travail of his brain issued at
length an odd mass of arabesques with which the walls were somehow
covered. His invention exhausted, he awaited in an agony of fear the
inspection of his Turkish master. He came, and was enchanted. The
painter was free, and the bey observed: "The dog wanted to deceive me: I
knew that all the Christians could paint."

You are amazed to find, in this nest of Islamite savagery and among
these wild rocks, the uttermost accent of modern French politeness. Your
presence is a windfall in quarters so retired, and you sit among orange
plants and straying gazelles, while the military band throws softly out
against the inaccessible crags