“The cases are rare,” I answered, for the sake of saying something.
“Cases rare!” he exclaimed, warmly. “Cases of every-day occurrence” (and here I would like to report exactly his broken, concise, and childish language). “Proof! Proof! I at Marseilles. I am at Marseilles. I buy cotton. I choose the thread, thick like this. I say: this number, this stamp, this quantity, send. I pay, I depart, arrive at Morocco, receive cotton, open, look, same number, same stamp—thread three times smaller! good for nothing! loss, thousands of francs! I run to Consulate—nothing. Otro, another. Merchant of Fez orders blue cloth in Europe, so many pieces, so wide, so long, agreed, paid. Receives cloth, opens, measures: first pieces right; under, shorter; last, half a yard shorter! not good for cloaks, merchant ruined. Otro, otro. Merchant of Morocco orders in Europe, thousand yards gold galloon for officers, and sends money. Galloon comes, cut, sewed, worn—copper! Y otros, y otros, y otros!” With this he lifted his face to the sky, and then turning abruptly to me: “More honest you?”
I repeated that these could only be exceptional cases. He made no reply.
“More religious you?” he asked then, shortly. “No!” and after a moment: “No! Enough to go once into one of your mosques.”
“You say,” he went on, encouraged by my silence, “in your country there are fewer matamientos (murders)?” Here I should have been embarrassed to answer. What would he have said if I had confessed that in Italy alone there are committed three thousand homicides a year, and that there are ninety thousand prisoners on trial and condemned?
“I do not believe it,” he said, reading my answer in my eyes. Not feeling myself secure upon this ground, I attacked him with the usual arguments against polygamy.
He jumped as if I had burnt him.
“Always that!” he cried, turning red to his very ears. “Always that! as if you had one woman only! and you want to make us believe it! One wife is really yours, but there are those of los otros, and those who are de todos y de nadie, of everybody and nobody. Paris! London! Cafés full, streets full, theatres full. Verguenza! and you reproach the Moors!”
So saying, he pulled the beads of his rosary through his trembling fingers, and turned from time to time with a faint smile to make me understand that his anger was not against me, but against Europe.
Seeing that he took this question rather too much to heart, I changed the subject, and asked him if he did not recognize greater convenience in our manner of living. Here he was very comic. He had his arguments all ready.