“Impossible! I will escort Madame to the gate. There I will wait for her. Monsieur the Count does not permit the Arabs to enter with strangers.”
“Very well,” Domini said.
The seller of perfumes had led her towards a dream. She was not combative, and she would be alone in the garden. As they walked towards it in the sun, through narrow ways where idle Arabs lounged with happy aimlessness, Batouch talked of Count Anteoni, the owner of the garden.
Evidently the Count was the great personage of Beni-Mora. Batouch spoke of him with a convinced respect, describing him as fabulously rich, fabulously generous to the Arabs.
“He never gives to the French, Madame, but when he is here each Friday, upon our Sabbath, he comes to the gate with a bag of money in his hand, and he gives five franc pieces to every Arab who is there.”
“And what is he? French?”
“He is Italian; but he is always travelling, and he has made gardens everywhere. He has three in Africa alone, and in one he keeps many lions. When he travels he takes six Arabs with him. He loves only the Arabs.”
Domini began to feel interested in this wandering maker of gardens, who was a pilgrim over the world like Monte Cristo.
“Is he young?” she asked.
“No.”