he usual platform; and
the only other ornaments were a few clocks and bunches of wax flowers
under glass. Like all Orientals, this hero of the Atlas, who spends half
his life with his fighting clansmen in a mediaeval stronghold among the
snows, and the other half rolling in a 60 h.p. motor over smooth French
roads, seems unaware of any degrees of beauty or appropriateness in
objects of European design, and places against the exquisite mosaics and
traceries of his Fazi craftsmen the tawdriest bric-a-brac of the cheap
department-store.

While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six
or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway.
Like most of the Moroccan slaves, even in the greatest households, she
was shabbily, almost raggedly, dressed. A dirty _gandourah_ of striped
muslin covered her faded caftan, and a cheap kerchief was wound above
her grave and precocious little face. With preternatural vigilance she
watched each movement of the Caid, who never spoke to her, looked at
her, or made her the slightest perceptible sign, but whose least wish
she instantly divined, refilling his tea-cup, passing the plates of
sweets, or removing our empty glasses, in obedience to some secret
telegraphy on which her whole being hung.

The Caid is a great man. He and his famous elder brother, holding the
southern marches of Morocco against alien enemies and internal
rebellion, played a preponderant part in the defence of the French
colonies in North Africa during the long struggle of the war.
Enlightened, cultivated, a friend of the arts, a scholar and
diplomatist, he seems, unlike many Orientals, to have selected the best
in assimilating European influences. Yet when I looked at the tiny
creature watching him with those anxious joyless eyes I felt once more
the abyss that slavery and the seraglio put between the most
Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life. The Caid's
little black slaves are well-known in Morocco, and behind the sad child
leaning in the archway stood all the shadowy evils of the social system
that hangs like a millstone about the neck of Islam.

Presently a handsome tattered negress came across the garden to invite
me to the harem. Captain de S. and his wife, who had accompanied me,
were old friends of the Chief's, and it was owing to this that the
jealously-guarded doors of the women's quarters were opened to Mme. de
S. and myself. We followed the negr