from Tunis. It could be used only
between his house and the town, or to reach the oasis just beyond, for
there was nowhere else to go; but, drawn by stalwart mules in Spanish
harness, for years it had taken the ladies of his household to the baths
and back. Lella Mabrouka and Taous (both veiled, though they had passed
the age of attractiveness when hiding the face is obligatory) chaperoned
the bride and her friend, the coachman and his assistant being fat and
elderly eunuchs.

At the doorway of the domed building, the only new one in Djazerta,
there was much stately fuss of screening the ladies as they left the
seclusion of the carriage. Then came a long, tiled corridor, which
opened into a room under the dome of the _hammam_, and there the party
was met not only by bowing female attendants, but by the guests, who had
arrived early to welcome them. Ourieda was received with pretty cries
and childlike, excited chattering, not only by her girl friends, but the
older women. All were undressed, ready for the bath, or they could not
have followed the bride to the hot rooms; and that was the object and
pleasure of the visit. Every one shrieked compliments as the clothing of
the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and
gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized
fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl
and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian
markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride. She
thanked the givers charmingly, though in a manner so subdued and with a
face so grave that the visitors would have been astonished had not Lella
Mabrouka explained that she had been ill with an attack of fever.

From hot room to hotter room the women trooped, resting, when they felt
inclined, upon mattings spread on marble, while the bride, the queen of
the occasion, was given a divan. They ate sweets and drank pink sherbet
or syrup-sweet coffee, and, instead of being bathed by one of the
attendants, Ourieda was waited upon by a great personage who came to
Djazerta only for the weddings of the highest. Originally she was from
Tunis, where her profession is a fine art; but having been superseded
there she had moved to Algiers, then to Touggourt; and thence the Agha
had summoned her for his daughter. She was Zakia, _la hennena_, a
skilled beautifier of women; and she had been sent for, some days in
advance o