The Ambassador presented his credentials, and then introduced the commandant, the captain, and the vice-consul, who advanced one after the other, and stood for a moment bowing low. The Sultan looked with particular attention at the commandant’s decorations.
“The physician”—then said the Ambassador, pointing us out—“and three scienzati” (men of science).
My eyes encountered the eyes of the god, and all the periods, already conceived, of this description confounded themselves in my mind.
The Sultan asked with curiosity which was the physician. “He to the right,” answered the interpreter.
He looked attentively at the doctor. Then accompanying his words with a graceful wave of his right hand, he said, “Peace be with you! Peace be with you! Peace be with you!” and turned his horse.
The band burst out, the trumpets sounded, the courtiers bent to the ground, guards, soldiers, and servants knelt on one knee, and once more the loud and prolonged shout arose:—“God protect our Sultan!”
The Sultan gone, the two ranks of high personages met and mingled, and there came toward us Sid-Moussa, with his sons, his officers, the Minister of War, the Minister of Finance, the Grand Scherif Bacali, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, all the great ones of the court, smiling, talking, and waving their hands in sign of festivity. A little later, Sid-Moussa having invited the Ambassador to rest in a garden of the Sultan’s, we mounted, crossed the square to the mysterious little road, and entered the august precincts of the Imperial residence.
Alleys bordered by high walls, small squares, courts, ruined houses and houses in course of construction, arched doors, corridors, little gardens, little mosques, a labyrinth to make one lose one’s way, and everywhere busy workmen, lines of servants, armed sentinels, and some faces of slave women behind the grated windows or at the openings in the doors: this was all. Not a single handsome edifice, nor any thing, beyond the guard, to indicate the residence of the sovereign. We entered a vast uncultivated garden, with shaded walks crossing each other at right angles, and shut in by high walls like the garden of a convent, and from thence, after a short rest, returned home, spreading by the way—the doctor, the painters, and myself—hilarity with our swallow-tails and terror with our gibus.
All that day we talked of nothing but the Sultan. We were all in love with him. Ussi tried a hundred times to sketch his face, and threw away his pencil in despair. We proclaimed him the handsomest and the most amiable of Mohammedan monarchs; and in order that the proclamation might be truly a national one, we sought the suffrages of the cook and the two sailors.
The cook, from whom all the spectacles seen between Tangiers and Fez had never drawn any thing but a smile of commiseration, showed himself generous to the Sultan:—