“Oh, a new idea!” shouted the vice-consul, bouncing up in his turn; “an impertinence, not to risk being murdered!”
A shout of laughter from the other two broke up the discussion, and before they spoke we understood that we had been the victims of a joke. They had told him that I was in the habit of wandering about in the night wrapped in a sheet, and with a pistol in my hand.
Peasant Women of the Interior.
The night passed without disturbance, and I awoke at dawn. The camp was still immersed in slumber; only among the tents of the escort a few persons were in motion. The sky in the east was of a brilliant rose-color. I went out among the tents, and stood in contemplation before the spectacle that lay in front of me.
The camp was placed on the side of a hill covered with grass, aloes, the prickly pear, and some flowering shrubs. Near the ambassador’s tent rose a tall palm-tree, gracefully inclined toward the east. In front of the hill extended an immense plain, undulating and covered with verdure, closed in the distance by a chain of dark-green mountains, behind which appeared other blue heights almost lost in the limpid sky. In all that space there was no house, nor curl of smoke, nor tent, nor cattle, to be seen. It was like an immense garden where no living thing was admitted. A fresh and perfumed breeze rustled the branches of the palm, and made the only sound that broke the silence. Suddenly, as I turned I beheld ten dilated eyes fixed on mine. Five Arabs were seated upon a mass of rock at a few steps from me—laborers from the country, come in in the night to see the encampment. They seemed sculptured out of the rock on which they sat. They looked at me without winking, without the least sign of curiosity, or sympathy, or embarrassment, or malevolence; the whole five motionless and impassive, their faces half hidden in their hoods, like personifications of the solitude and silence of the fields. I put one hand in my pocket, and the ten eyes followed it; I took out a cigar, and the ten eyes fixed themselves upon it; they followed every motion that I made. Little by little I discovered other figures farther off, seated in the grass two by two and three by three, motionless and hooded, and, like the first, with their eyes fixed on me. They seemed to have risen from the earth, dead men with their eyes open, appearances rather than real persons, which would vanish under the first beams of the sun. A long and tremulous cry, coming from that part of the camp where the escort lay, disturbed me from my contemplation of these beings. A Mussulman soldier was announcing to his fellows the first of the five canonical hours of prayer which every Mussulman must follow. Some soldiers came out of the tents, spread their mantles on the earth, and knelt down upon them, their faces toward the east. Three times they rubbed their hands, arms, head, and feet with a handful of earth, and then began to recite their prayers in a low voice, kneeling, rising to their feet, prostrating themselves face downward, lifting their open hands to a level with their ears, and crouching on their heels. Soon the commander of the escort issued from his tent, and was followed by his servants, then the cooks. In a few minutes the greater part of the population of the camp was afoot. The sun, scarcely above the horizon, was scorching.
The Arab’s Morning Prayer.
When I went back to my tent, I made the acquaintance of several odd personages to whom I shall have frequently to allude.
The first to appear was one of the Italian sailors, orderly to the captain of the frigate, a Sicilian, born at Porto Empedocle, Ranni by name,—a young fellow of twenty-five, very tall, and of herculean build and strength,—good-tempered, grave as a magistrate, and endowed with the singular virtue of never being astonished at any thing, except perhaps the astonishment of others. For him, Porto Empedocle, Gibraltar, Africa, China, the moon itself, had he been in it, were all the same.