easy to kill. In the time of a brief sickness
that visited him the French took the oases of Tuat, which belongs to the
country just so surely as does this our Marrakesh. They have been from
times remote a place of resting for the camels, like Tindouf in the Sus.
But our Master recovered his lordship with his health, and the French went
back from our land. After that my Lord el Hasan went to Tafilalt over the
Atlas, never sparing himself. And when he returned to this city, weary and
very sick, at the head of an army that lacked even food and clothing, the
Spaniards were at the gates of Er-Riff once more, and the tribes were out
like a fire of thorns over the northern roads. But because the span
allotted him by destiny was fulfilled, and also because he was worn out
and would not rest, my Lord Hasan died near Tadla; and Ba Ahmad, his
chief wazeer, hid his death from the soldiers until his son Abd-el-Aziz
was proclaimed."

There was a pause here, as though my host were overwhelmed with
reflections and was hard driven to give sequence to his narrative. "Our
present Lord was young," he continued at last thoughtfully; "he was a very
young man, and so Ba Ahmad spoke for him and acted for him, and threw into
prison all who might have stood before his face. Also, as was natural, he
piled up great stores of gold, and took to his hareem the women he
desired, and oppressed the poor and the rich, so that many men cursed him
privately. But for all that Ba Ahmad was a wise man and very strong. He
saw the might of the French in the East, and of the Bashadors who pollute
Tanjah in the North; he remembered the ships that came to the waters in
the West, and he knew that the men of these ships want to seize all the
foreign lands, until at last they rule the earth even as they rule the
sea. Against all the wise men of the Nazarenes who dwell in Tanjah the
wazeer fought in the name of the Exalted of God,[33] so that no one of
them could settle on this land to take it for himself and break into the
bowels of the earth. To be sure, in Wazzan and far in the Eastern country
the accursed French grew in strength and in influence, for they gave
protection, robbing the Sultan of his subjects. But they took little land,
they sent few to Court, the country was ours until the wazeer had
fulfilled his destiny and died. Allah pardon him, for he was a man, and
ruled this country, as his Master before him, with a rod of very steel."

"But," I objected, "y