Their faces were blacker, their robes more gaudy, their horses finer, their yells more extraordinary, their charges and manœuvres more wildly impetuous than any we had yet seen. The further we advanced, the more apparent became the local color of all things.
In all that multitude twelve horsemen, dressed with unusual elegance and mounted on beautiful horses, were conspicuous, even in the eyes of the Arabs. Five of them were colossal young men, who appeared to be brothers; all had pale bronzed faces and great black brilliant eyes under enormous turbans, These five were the sons, and the other seven, nephews of the governor Ben-Auda.
The firing and charging went on for about an hour, at which time we reached a garden belonging to the governor, where we dismounted to rest and refresh ourselves.
It was a grove of orange and lemon trees, planted in parallel rows, and so thickly as to form an intricate green roof, under which one enjoyed the coolness, shade, and perfume of paradise.
The governor dismounted with us, and presented his sons,—five as handsome, dignified, and amiable faces as are often to be seen. One after the other pressed our hands, with a slight bow, casting down his eyes with an air of boyish shyness.
We were all presently seated in the garden, upon a beautiful carpet from Rabat, where we were served with breakfast. The governor of Ben-Auda sat upon a mat at twenty paces from us, and also breakfasted, waited upon by his slaves. Then ensued a curious exchange of courtesies between him and the ambassador. First, Ben-Auda sent a vase of milk as an offering: the ambassador returned it with a beefsteak. The milk was followed by butter, the beefsteak by an omelet; the butter by a sweet dish, the omelet by a box of sardines; the whole accompanied by a thousand coldly ceremonious gestures—hands clasped upon the breast, and eyes turned up to heaven with a comical expression of gastronomic enthusiasm. The sweet dish, by the way, was a species of tart made of honey, eggs, butter, and sugar, of which the Arabs are extremely fond, and about which they have an odd superstition—that if while the woman is cooking it a man should happen to enter the room, the tart goes wrong, and even if it could be eaten it would not be prudent to do so. “And wine?” some one asked; “should we not offer him some wine?” There was some discussion. It was asserted that governor Ben-Auda was in secret devoted to the bottle; but how could he drink in the presence of his soldiers? It was decided not to send any. To me, however, it seemed that he cast very soft glances at the bottles, much softer than those with which he favored us. During the whole time that he sat there on his mat, except when he was giving thanks for gifts, he maintained a frowning expression of pride and anger that made me wish to have under my orders our forty companies of bersaglieri,[[2]] that I might parade them under his nose.
Mohammed Ducali meantime was relating to me a notable episode in the history of Ben-Auda, in which family the government of Seffian has been for ages. The people of this province are brave and turbulent; and they are said to have given proof of their valor in the late war with Spain, when, at the battle of Vad-Ras, in March, 1861, Sidi Absalam Ben-Abd-el-Krim Ben-Auda, then governor of the whole province of Garb, was killed. To this Absalam succeeded his eldest son, Sidi Abd-el-Krim. He was a violent and dissipated man, who despoiled his people by taxation and tormented them with a capricious ferocity. One day he intimated to one Gileli Ruqui that he desired a large sum of money. The man excused himself on the plea of poverty. He was loaded with chains and cast into prison, The family and friends of the prisoner sold all they had and brought the desired sum to Sidi Abd-el-Krim. Gileli came out of prison, and having assembled all his friends, they took a solemn oath to kill the governor. His house was situated at about two hours’ ride from the garden where we were. The conspirators attacked it in the night in force. They killed the sentinels, broke into the hall, strangled and poniarded Sidi Abd-el-Krim, his wives, children, servants, and slaves; sacked and burned the house, and then threw themselves into the open country, raising the cry of revolt. The relatives and partisans of Ben-Auda gathered themselves together and marched against the rebels; the rebels dispersed them, and rebellion broke out all over the Garb. Then the Sultan sent an army; the revolt, after a furious resistance, was put down, and the heads of the leaders hung from the gates of Fez and Morocco; the land of the Benimalek was divided from the province; the house of Ben-Auda was rebuilt; and Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda, brother of the murdered man, and guest of the Italian embassy, assumed the government of the land of his fathers. It was a passing victory of desperation over tyranny, followed by a harder tyranny than before; in these words may be summed up the history of every province of the empire, and, perhaps, at that very moment there was a predestined Gileli Ruqui for Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda.
Before sunset we reached our encampment, which was not very far off, on a solitary plain, at the foot of a small eminence on which was a Cuba flanked by a palm tree.
The ambassador had hardly arrived, when the mona was brought and deposited as usual before his tent, in the presence of the intendant, the caid, the soldiers, and servants. Whilst they were busy making the division, I saw, as I raised my eyes toward the Cuba, a man of tall stature and strange aspect coming down with long strides toward the encampment. There was no doubt about it: here was the hermit, the saint, coming to make a disturbance. I said not a word, but waited. He skirted the camp on the outside so as to appear suddenly before the ambassador’s tent. He moved on the tips of his toes; a sepulchral figure, covered with black rags, disgusting to behold. All at once he broke into a run, dashed into the midst of us; and, recognizing our chief by his dress, rushed upon him with the howl of one possessed. But he had scarcely time to howl. With lightning rapidity the caid seized him by the throat, and dragged him furiously into the midst of the soldiery, who in a second had him out of the camp, stifling his roars with a mantle. The interpreter translated his invectives as follows: “Let us exterminate all these accursed Christian dogs, who go to the Sultan and do what they please, while we are dying with hunger!”
A little after the presentation of the customary mona, there arrived at the camp about fifty Arabs and blacks, bearing in single file great round boxes, with high conical covers of straw, and containing eggs, chickens, tarts, sweets, roast meats, cùscùssù, salads, etc., enough to satisfy an entire tribe. It was a second mona, spontaneously offered to the ambassador by Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda, perhaps to do away with the effect of his threatening visage in the morning.