“Only three cities are safe from them now in all Morocco: Sheshawan in the north, Tafilat in the south, and Mulai Idris. But Mulai Idris is safest. Once a party of them—Englishmen—came rising up the steep road to the gate even there, but from the walls we stoned them back. God’s curse on them! Let them stay at home! But they must always be pushing somewhere.”
Dimoussi, recognising in himself a point of kinship with the “consools,” said gravely:
“I am an Englishman.”
The Sherarda man laughed, as though he had heard an excellent joke, and continued to discourse upon the splendours of Mulai Idris until the sleepers waked in their corners, and the keeper flung open the door, and the grey daylight crept into the Fondak.
“Oh, tell me!” said Dimoussi. “The city is far from here?”
“Set out now. You will be in Mulai Idris before sunset.”
Dimoussi rose to his feet.
“I will go to Mulai Idris,” said he, and he went out into the cool, clear air. The Sherarda Moor accompanied Dimoussi to the Bordain Gate, and there they parted company, the boy going northward, the Moor following the eastward track towards Fez. He had done his work, though what he had done he did not know.
At noon Dimoussi came out upon a high tableland, as empty as the plains which stretched about his native Agurai. Far away upon his left the dark, serrated ridge of Jebel Gerouan stood out against the sky. Nearer to him upon his right rose the high rock of Jebel Zarhon. In some fold of that mountain lay this fabulous city of Mulai Idris.
Dimoussi walked forward, a tiny figure in that vast solitude. There were no villages, there were no trees anywhere. The plateau extended ahead of him like a softly heaving sea, as far as the eye could reach. It was covered with bushes in flower; and here and there an acre of marigolds or a field of blue lupins decked it out, as though someone had chosen to make a garden there.