ing, the continuance of the very life that went on there when the
tiles were set and the gold was new on the ceilings.

[Footnote A: In _France-Maroc, No._ 1.]

For these tottering Medersas, already in the hands of the restorers, are
still inhabited. As long as the stairway holds and the balcony has not
rotted from its corbels, the students of the University see no reason
for abandoning their lodgings above the cool fountain and the house of
prayer. The strange men giving incomprehensible orders for unnecessary
repairs need not disturb their meditations, and when the hammering grows
too loud the _oulamas_ have only to pass through the silk market or the
_souk_ of the embroiderers to the mosque of Kairouiyin, and go on
weaving the pattern of their dreams by the fountain of perfect bliss.

One reads of the bazaars of Fez that they have been for centuries the
central market of the country. Here are to be found not only the silks
and pottery, the Jewish goldsmiths' work, the arms and embroidered
saddlery which the city itself produces, but "morocco" from Marrakech,
rugs, tent-hangings and matting from Rabat and Sale, grain baskets from
Moulay Idriss, daggers from the Souss, and whatever European wares the
native markets consume. One looks, on the plan of Fez, at the space
covered by the bazaars, one breasts the swarms that pour through them
from dawn to dusk--and one remains perplexed, disappointed. They are
less "Oriental" than one had expected, if "Oriental" means color and
gaiety.

Sometimes, on occasion, it does mean that: as, for instance, when a
procession passes bearing the gifts for a Jewish wedding. The gray crowd
makes way for a group of musicians in brilliant caftans, and following
them comes a long file of women with uncovered faces and bejewelled
necks, balancing on their heads the dishes the guests have sent to the
feast--_kouskous_, sweet creams and syrups, "gazelles' horns" of sugar
and almonds--in delicately woven baskets, each covered with several
squares of bright gauze edged with gold. Then one remembers the
marketing of the Lady of "The Three Calendars," and Fez again becomes
the Bagdad of Al Raschid.

[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_

Fez--the bazaars. A view of the Souk el Attarine and the Quaisarya (silk
market)]

But when no exceptional events, processions, ceremonies and the like
brighten the underworld of the _souks_, their look is uniformly
me