His cynicism revolted me; I could scarcely believe it; I had the curiosity to probe him a little more deeply.
“Since you left Algeria,” I asked, “have you had no news of events in Europe?”
“Pas un mot,” he answered. “Here nobody knows any thing, and I am very glad not to know any thing.”
“You do not know, then, that there has been a great war between France and Prussia?”
He started. “Qui a vaincu?” he asked, quickly, fixing his eyes upon me.
“Prussia,” I replied.
He made a gesture of surprise. I told him in a few words of the disasters that had befallen France,—the invasion, the taking of Paris, the loss of the two provinces. He listened with his head bent down and his eyebrows knit; then he roused himself and said, with a kind of effort, “C´est égal—I have no country, it is no affair of mine,” and he bent his head again. I observed him steadily, and he saw it. “Adieu, Monsieur,” he said, abruptly, in an altered voice, and walked quickly away.
“All is not dead within him yet!” I thought, and was glad.
Meantime the artillery had ceased its fire, the Sultan had retired under a white pavilion at the foot of a tower, and the soldiers began to defile before him, unarmed, and one by one, at about twenty paces one from the other. As there was not beside the Sultan, or in front of the pavilion any officer to read the names, as with us, in order to certify the existence of every soldier on the rolls (and I am told there are no rolls in the army of Morocco), I could not understand the purpose of the review, unless it was for the Sultan’s amusement; and I was tempted to laugh. But, upon second thoughts, the primitive and poetic idea in the sight of that African monarch, high-priest, an absolute prince, young, gentle, and in all simplicity standing three hours alone in the shadow of his tent, and three times in every week seeing his soldiers passing before him one by one, and listening to the prayers and lamentations of his unhappy subjects inspired me instead with a feeling of respect. And since it was the last time that I should see him, I felt a sudden rush of sympathy toward him as I turned away. “Farewell,” I thought, “handsome and noble prince!” and as his gracious white figure disappeared for ever from my eyes, I felt a sensation in my breast as if, in that moment, it had been stamped upon my heart.
The ninth of June: the last day of the sojourn of the Italian Embassy at Fez. All the Ambassador’s demands have been conceded, the affairs of Ducali and Schellal arranged, visits of leave-taking made, the last dinner of Sid-Moussa submitted to, the usual presents from the Sultan received: a fine black horse, with an enormous green velvet saddle embroidered with gold for the Ambassador; gilded and damascened sabres to the officials of the Embassy; a mule to the second dragoman. The tents and boxes were sent forward this morning, the rooms are empty, the mules are ready, the escort awaits us at the gate of Nicchia del Burro, my companions are walking up and down the court, expecting the signal for departure, and I, seated for the last time upon the edge of my imperial bed, note down in a book upon my knee my last impressions of Fez. What are they? What is left at last at the bottom of my soul by the spectacle of this people, this city, this state of things? If my thought penetrates at all under the pleasing impressions of wonder and gratified curiosity, I find a mingling of diverse sentiments, which leave my mind uncertain. There is a feeling of pity for the decay, the debasement, the agony of a warlike and knightly race, who left so luminous a track in the history of science and art, and now have not even the consciousness of their past glory. There is admiration for what remains in them of the strong and beautiful, for the virile and gracious majesty of their aspect, dress, demeanor, and ceremonies; for every thing that their sad and silent life retains of its antique dignity and simplicity. There is displeasure at the sight of so much barbarism at so short a distance from civilization, and that this civilization should have so disproportionate a force in rising and expanding, that in so many centuries, and always growing on its own ground, it has been unable to cross two hundred miles of sea. There is anger at the thought that, to the great interest of the barbarism of this part of Africa, the civilized states prefer their own small local and mercantile interests; and diminishing thus in the minds of this people, by the spectacle of their mean jealousies, their own authority and that of the civilization which they desire to spread, render the undertaking always more difficult and slow. Finally, there is a sentiment of vivid pleasure, when I think that in this country another little world has been formed in my brain, populous, animated, full of new personages who will live forever there, whom I can evoke at will, and can converse with them, and live again in Africa. But with this glad feeling comes another which is sad, the inevitable sentiment that throws a shadow over all our serene hours and drops a drop of bitterness into all our pleasures—that which the Moorish merchant expressed when he demonstrated the vanity of the great efforts of civilized people to study, to seek, to discover; and then this beautiful journey seems to me only the rapid passage of a fine scene in the spectacle of an hour, which is life; and my pencil drops from my hand, and a dark discouragement takes possession of me. Ah! the voice of Selam calls me! We must go, then. To return to the tent, to the warlike manœuvres, the wide plains, the great light, the joyous and wholesome life of the encampment. Farewell, Fez! Farewell, sadness! My little African world is again illuminated with rose color.