t my Lord was but a young man, and so they brought these things,
and Abd-el-Aziz gave them of the country's riches, and conversed with them
familiarly, as though they had been of the house of a Grand Shareef.
But in the far east of the Moghreb the French closed the oases of Tuat and
Tidikelt without rebuke, and burnt Ksor and destroyed the Faithful with
guns containing green devils,[36] and said, 'We do all this that we may
venture abroad without fear of robbers.' Then my Lord sent the War
Minister, the kaid Maheddi el Menebhi, to London, and he saw your Sultan
face to face. And your Sultan's wazeers said to him, 'Tell the Lord of the
Moghreb to rule as we rule, to gather his taxes peaceably and without
force, to open his ports, to feed his prisoners, to follow the wisdom of
the West. If he will do this, assuredly his kingdom shall never be moved.'
Thereafter your Sultan's great men welcomed the kaid yet more kindly, and
showed him all that Allah the One had given them in his mercy, their
palaces, their workplaces, their devil ships that move without sails over
the face of the waters, and their unveiled women who pass without shame
before the faces of men. And though the kaid said nothing, he remembered
all these things.

"When he returned, and by the aid of your own Bashador in Tanjah prevailed
over the enemies who had set snares in his path while he fared abroad, he
stood up before my Lord and told him all he had seen. Thereupon my Lord
Abd-el-Aziz sought to change that which had gone before, to make a new
land as quickly as the father of the red legs[37] builds a new nest, or
the boar of the Atlas whom the hunter has disturbed finds a new lair. And
the land grew confused. It was no more the Moghreb, but it assuredly was
not as the lands of the West.

"In the beginning of the season of change the French were angry. 'All men
shall pay an equal tax throughout my land,' said the King of the Age, and
the Bashador of the French said, 'Our protected subjects shall not yield
even a handful of green corn to the gatherer.' Now when the people saw
that the tax-gatherers did not travel as they were wont to travel, armed
and ready to kill, they hardened their hearts and said, 'We will pay no
taxes at all, for these men cannot overcome us.' So the tribute was not
yielded, and the French Bashador said to the Sultan, 'Thou seest that
these people will not pay, but we out of our abundant wealth will give all
the money that is needed.