ess to a marble-paved court where
pigeons fluttered and strutted about the central fountain. From under a
trellised arcade hung with linen curtains several ladies came forward.
They greeted my companion with exclamations of delight; then they led us
into the usual commonplace room with divans and whitewashed walls. Even
in the most sumptuous Moroccan palaces little care seems to be expended
on the fittings of the women's quarters: unless, indeed, the room in
which visitors are received corresponds with a boarding-school
"parlour," and the personal touch is reserved for the private
apartments.

The ladies who greeted us were more richly dressed than any I had seen
except the Sultan's favourites, but their faces were more distinguished,
more European in outline, than those of the round-cheeked beauties of
Rabat. My companions had told me that the Caid's harem was recruited
from Georgia, and that the ladies receiving us had been brought up in
the relative freedom of life in Constantinople; and it was easy to read
in their wistfully smiling eyes memories of a life unknown to the
passive daughters of Morocco.

They appeared to make no secret of their regrets, for presently one of
them, with a smile, called my attention to some faded photographs
hanging over the divan. They represented groups of plump
provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it
required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely
creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under
complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions,
were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs. But to the
sumptuously-clad exiles these faded photographs and ugly dresses
represented freedom, happiness, and all they had forfeited when fate
(probably in the shape of an opulent Hebrew couple "travelling with
their daughters") carried them from the Bosphorus to the Atlas.

As in the other harems I had visited, perfect equality seemed to prevail
between the ladies, and while they chatted with Mme. de S. whose few
words of Arabic had loosed their tongues, I tried to guess which was the
favourite, or at least the first in rank. My choice wavered between the
pretty pale creature with a _ferronniere_ across her temples and a
tea-rose caftan veiled in blue gauze, and the nut-brown beauty in red
velvet hung with pearls whose languid attitudes and long-lidded eyes
were so like the Keepsake portraits of Byr