Toward evening we left Mechinez, and travelled for two hours over the loveliest country that was ever seen in his dreams by an enamored painter. I see, I feel still the divine grace of those verdant hills, sprinkled with rose-trees, myrtles, oleanders, flowering aloes; the splendor of that city gilded by the sun, hiding from our sight minaret by minaret, palm-tree by palm-tree, terrace by terrace, and the air impregnated with inebriating perfume, and the waters reflecting the thousand colors of the escort, and the infinite melancholy of that rosy sky. I still see and feel all this, and know not how to describe it.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE SEBÙ.
It was noon of the fifth day after our departure from Fez, when, after a five hours’ ride through a succession of deserted valleys, we passed once more through the gorge of Beb-el-Tinca, and saw again before us the vast plain of the Sebù inundated by a white, ardent, implacable light, of which the memory alone makes my face glow. All, except the Ambassador and the captain, who participated in the fabled virtue of the salamander, that lives in fire without being burned, covered their heads like brethren of the Misericordia, wrapped themselves in their mantles and cloaks, and without a word, with heads down, and eyes half closed, descended into the terrible plain, confiding in the clemency of God. Once the voice of the commandant was heard announcing that a horse was dead already. One of the baggage-horses had fallen dead. No one made any comment. “Horses,” added the commandant, spitefully, “always die first.” These words also were received in mortal silence. In about half an hour another faint voice was heard, asking Ussi to whom he had bequeathed his picture of Bianca Cappello. Throughout the journey these were the only words heard. The heat oppressed all. Even the soldiers were silent. The caid, Hamed Ben-Kasen, in spite of the great turban that shaded his visage, was dripping with sweat. Poor general! That very morning he had shown me an attention that I shall remember all my life. Noticing that I lagged behind, he came up, and banged my mule with such heartfelt zeal, that in a few moments I was carried at a gallop in front of all the others, bouncing in my saddle like an india-rubber automaton, and reached the camp five minutes in advance of them all, with my inside upside down, and my heart full of gratitude.
That day no one came out of his tent until the dinner hour, and the dinner was silent, as if all were still oppressed by the heat of the day. One event alone aroused some excitement in the camp. We were at dessert, when we heard a sound of lamentation proceeding from the escort’s quarters, and at the same time the noise of regular blows, as of some one being whipped. Thinking it to be some joke of the servants and soldiers, we took, at first, no notice of it. But suddenly the cries become excruciating, and we heard distinctly, in an accent of supplicating invocation, the name of the founder of Fez—“Muley-Edris! Muley-Edris! Muley-Edris!”
We all rose at once from the table, and running to the quarter whence the noise proceeded, arrived in time to see a sad spectacle. Two soldiers held suspended between them, one by the shoulders, the other by the feet, an Arab servant; a third was furiously flogging him with a whip; a fourth held up a lantern; the rest stood round in a circle, and the caid looked on with folded arms.
The Ambassador ordered the instant release of the victim, who went off sobbing and crying, and asked the caid what this meant. “Oh, nothing, nothing,” he answered; “only a little correction.” He then added that the man was punished because he had persisted in throwing little balls of cùscùssù at his companions, a grave offence, in a Mussulman a sacrilege, because he is commanded to respect every kind of aliment produced by the earth as a gift of God. As he spoke, the poor caid, a kind man at heart, did not succeed in concealing, however he might wish to do so, the pain and pity that he felt at being forced to inflict the castigation; and this sufficed to restore him to his place in my heart.
In the night we were awakened by a burning hot wind from the east, which drove us panting from our tents, in search of air that we could breathe; and at dawn we resumed our journey under a sky that announced a hotter day than the preceding one. The heavens were covered with clouds, on one side all on fire with the rising sun, and broken here and there by dazzling beams of light; on the opposite side all was black, striped by oblique streaks of rain. From this troubled sky there fell a strange light, which seemed to have passed through a yellow veil, and tinted the stubble fields with an angry sulphurous color that offended the eye. Far off the wind raised and whirled about with furious rapidity immense clouds of dust. The country was solitary, the air heavy, the horizon hidden by a veil of leaden-colored vapor. Without ever having seen the Sahara, I imagined that it might sometimes present that same aspect, and was about to say so, when Ussi, who has been in Egypt, stopping suddenly, exclaimed in wonder: “This is the desert!”
After four hours’ journey we arrived upon the bank of the Sebù, where we were met by twenty horsemen of the Beni-Hassen, led by a handsome boy of twelve, the son of the governor, Sid-Abdallah. They came to meet us at a gallop, with the usual shouts and discharges of musketry.
The camp was pitched in all haste near the river, on a bare piece of ground, full of deep gullies; and having breakfasted quickly, we withdrew to our tents.
This was the hottest day of the journey.