Lumento rugas ventris quod condere tentas.
Pliny says (l. xxviii. c. 25), that lupine flour made into a paste with vinegar, will, if smeared on in the bath, remove pimples and itching, and dry up running sores; that a decoction of lupines will cure freckles and brace the skin.
[240] Pliny, xxviii. 51.
CHAPTER VIII.
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS.
The domestic arrangements differ here from other Mussulman countries. The house is not divided into Harem and Salambu. In fact, there is no harem, for there are neither its rights nor privileges: the separation of the women, which in Arabia could not be extended to the habitation, adapted itself to the gynæceum of the houses among the Greeks, and the Zanana of the followers of Zoroaster. In Morocco, there having been no such anterior practice, the injunction has had no effect on those who live under the tent, and has converted the domiciles of the inhabitants of the cities into inhospitable abodes. I went to-day to Mike Brettel’s, on invitation, expressly for the purpose of seeing his house, which is just finished. I can see nothing more remarkable at Fez or Morocco, so I shall endeavour to describe it.
We approached by a narrow lane of blind walls about twelve feet high. The door was in the corner, the arch above it, and the lintels were painted in broad bars, and stripes of deep colours like an Egyptian tomb: there was a knocker—nay, two—one for the folding doors, and another for the wicket; the upper one might have been made in London. We knocked: the knock is neither a single tap, nor a postman’s double rap, but a double knock, though neither quite so loud or long as those with which the squares of London were wont to resound. The door not being immediately opened, we heard within a bell rung sharply, (in Eastern countries the bell is unknown), and the door was opened by a young girl, a slave, small, yet apparently full grown. She wore a tunic of blue and white, striped, which left her neck, arms, and half her legs bare. Her colour was chocolate, her features perfect, her form a model. Her sparkling eyes and white teeth announced that the visit was expected; and, waving her hands as a signal to follow, she tripped up a narrow staircase by the door. The steps and passages were inlaid with hexagonal red tiles and small triangles of green tiles: there was no flooring about the house richer than this, which is very modest: the houses and courtyard of the Jews are in Mosaic. At the top of the stairs we found ourselves in a small vestibule, the light let in from above, through the ornamented portions of the ceiling. Everything was in proportion: all palace-like, but microscopic;—I might have taken it for the abode of the pigmies of Herodotus, had my guide not rather suggested fairies or sylphs.
The vestibule led to an apartment, where the master of the house was seated in the middle of the floor with a tea-tray before him. Seeing me busied in taking off my shoes, he came forward entreating me to enter with them on; for it is common to imagine that Europeans make it a point of honour to disregard the feelings of their Eastern hosts, and to soil their carpets. This room was the gem of the house, but it was some time before I could venture to examine it, being shamed by the officious zeal of the Jews who accompanied me, and who began at once to point out this and that, as if we had entered a shop,—I mean a European one,—for in an Oriental shop the decencies are not neglected.
Mike Brettel commenced making tea;—they use fine green tea—they put it into the pot with sundry sweet herbs and large lumps of sugar. The teapot was Britannia metal, the cups and saucers the small delicate Chinese. The tray was of a manufacture for which Rabat is celebrated. It is brass chased in arabesques and inlaid in colours. At Mecca they work in the same way. He rang the bell for hot water and sugar, which were brought, the one by the olive maiden already mentioned, the other by one whom I might have taken for her, had her tunic not been white and red. The hot water was brought in a common tin kettle, the sugar in a japanned epaulette box. The two little slaves having discharged their office, returned and stood with crossed arms against the white wall, which cast forth as from the field of a phantasmagoria, their plump, symmetrical and dark limbs. They seemed to have been sent on the part of the female household to do all the work of gazing on the strangers; and if I had to judge by them of those we did not see, Mike Brettel’s Harem, for beauty, originality, and sprightliness, had little to fear from competition, far or near.
I was accompanied by the consular agent, his soldier, and a common Jew. After Mr. Leraza and I were seated, the soldier was invited to sit down, and then the Jew: he did so quite familiarly, close to the master of the house, who, with his own hand served him, after the rest, with tea.
The room was a cube of fifteen feet; there was one small window, a simple aperture in the white wall in the form of a niche struck through the thickness of the wall, levelled inside; this feature took the apartment out of the common-place. On the floor was spread one of their beautiful mats; on the three sides were mattresses covered with Turkey carpets, and cushions at each end resembling a low Turkish divan. The walls were dead white, broken by richly-ornamented arm-racks. Three long guns on each in their red cloth cases, daggers in massive chased silver scabbards, swords and pouches, were suspended by silk cords with large tassels, blue, red and yellow. The crown of the room was the ceiling: an octagon dome was fitted on to the cube by means of arches in the angles, which will be understood by reference to the Hall of the Ambassadors, in Owen Jones’s Alhambra; but the roof, instead of being in coloured stucco, was in carved and painted wood. There was no gilding or silvering—the effect was worked out entirely from dead colour. I looked at it till my neck was sore and stiff, and I can only describe it by the word arabesque, just as I might say kaleidoscope, and in like manner, interminable: the same elements re-appear in never-ending forms, ever pleasing, ever new, yet always, in so far as description can go, the same. The roof was the statue, the apartment the pedestal: each required the other. The solitary light, the pure white walls, the cubic form, were required to set off the placid beauty of the dome. The window was minute; the door (if one might say so in reference to so small a body,) grand. Its horse-shoe arch expanded to the sides and reached the vault, displaying the little vestibule, all variegated in colours, all ornamented in form like the ceiling. It was a thing not to live in, but to gaze at.