The Moroccan delegate, Sid Hach el Mokri, Ancient Inspector of Weights and Measures at Fez, and his colleague did little but protest against the reforms the Powers proposed to institute at the expense of Morocco and under the direction of the Diplomatic Corps at Tangiers. Hach el Mokri cried out that he was there to see Morocco’s income increased, not decreased, and that many of the proposed reforms had not been included in the programme of the Conference. Patsy, who had seen Sid Mokri and made an excellent photograph of the old man in his white bournous, with his long white beard and piercing eyes, had a sneaking sympathy for him.
“After all, the world will be a tame place when there are telephones and electric cars everywhere,” he said. “If Morocco does not want to be civilized our way, or any other way, why should she be?” The Powers are cutting and carving the revenues, the commerce, the future of that unfortunate country as if they were masters of the situation. They are a long way from it! Before France gets the little Germany means to let her have, she must pay dear for it, even if England stands by to see fair play.
I had a sudden vision of the garden in Tangiers and the strange old man who had talked with me of Moroccan affairs. I seemed to hear his brooding voice utter, as if in prophecy, “Keep your ear to the ground; the end of Islam is not yet!”
Our Spanish friends were naturally even more interested in Don Alfonzo’s affairs than in those of the Sultan of Morocco. It was wonderful how the courtship of one pair of lovers made a whole nation in love with life! There was a delicate thrill of expectation in the air. Spain drank deep of the three great cordials, youth, hope and love, forgot the old pain in the new rapture. Every detail of the King’s wooing was eagerly discussed. The news that the Princess Ena had been received into the Church of Rome and renounced the errors of the Protestant faith was a “world event.” Her decision to take the names, Victoria Eugenie, gave great satisfaction. It was rumored that the Empress Eugenie had given her a wedding present of a million pesetas, and would make the future Queen of Spain her heir. Older people recalled the poor young Prince Imperial’s early attachment to Princess Beatrice, Princess Ena’s mother.
“The Empress was a Spaniard,” Candalaria reminded me; “a Montijo of Malaga. My parents knew the family. It is quite natural she should wish her money to come back to Spain. My father was at the funeral of her son, the Prince Imperial. He saw the great English Queen, Victoria, and her daughter, Princess Beatrice, when they drove over to Chiselhurst to lay a golden laurel wreath on the coffin of the young Prince Napoleon IV, as they called him, killed in the Zulu war, fighting for the English.”
We had all become so absorbed in the pleasant social life of Madrid, so taken up with current matters of public and private interest, that the many journeys we had planned were put off and put off. Had it not been for a chance question of Patsy’s, we might never even have seen Toledo, we were living—except for those golden hours in the Prado—so completely in To-day. One brilliant March afternoon Don Jaime greeted me at the door of the Museum with his cheery “Good day, Missis.” The Don liked to go with us to the Prado; he was interested in Patsy’s art education and, if neither Villegas nor Don Luis were present, would hold forth on the merits of the pictures.
“Good afternoon, Don,” said Patsy; “what’s the news?”
“There are very few news. You receive some lollipops?” The Don’s intercourse with English-speaking people, broken off when he left school, led him to suppose that to be happy they must be continually fed with lollipops.
“Nuns of Concepcion Convent has secret of preparing those sweets, same like Benedictines’ liquor secret.”
Knowing his poverty, I was troubled by the little presents he was forever making one or other of us, of which Patsy’s lollipops were an example.