esses, blue silk four-posters; a great cushioned mattress on the
carpet beside the bed is reported to be used by the wife; a slave will
often sleep in the same room. The lower half of the whitewashed walls was
hung with ancient silk brocaded hangings, a long-forgotten relic of the
old wandering life as nomad Arabs, and still used by Arabs for the
insides of their tents. The richer the owner, the better his silk
hangings: the design is invariably a succession of horse-shoe arches,
more or less embroidered, and giving the rooms a warm, luxurious air. In
the mosques very fine mats are used; in ordinary houses, cafes, and
shops, yellow matting lines the walls. Above the old hangings the Duke
had hung a line of immense and tawdry gilt-framed mirrors. There were
clocks in the room to the number of ten, some of them going; two inlaid
cabinets; three cases of artificial flowers under glass; a great wooden
coffer--the wife's property--holding a wardrobe of clothes; a gun on one
of the walls; a rosary; a thermometer made in Germany: these were the
only knick-knacks. Moorish rooms combine bedroom with sitting-room, but
are devoid of washing-apparatus, tables, chairs, books, or pictures.
Bathing is done in the hummum or in the courtyard of the mosque; of books
there are none; while pictures Mohammed forbade, as inclined to lead to
idolatry. Query: have many artists been lost to the world in fourteen
hundred years among a sect numbering a hundred millions?

The ceiling and woodwork of the room were painted in barbaric, gaudy
hues, which mellow with age and "tone" like a faded Kashmir shawl. A row
of tiled pillars divided the room lengthwise, and raised the inner half a
step above the outer: it was immensely lofty, lighted by the great double
doors only, which stood wide open on to the patio. Glass is not used in
Morocco: the windowless rooms are aired by the unfastened doors which
look on to the patio, itself open to the winds of heaven. The outside
world can have little idea of the life going on within the courtyard
house: there is much seclusion therein, in fitting harmony with the
spirit of Morocco.

Fireplaces do not exist, though from December to March the thermometer
has sometimes, on single occasions, touched freezing-point at night.
Earthenware pans of charcoal, used for cooking, can be carried upstairs
for warmth.

The other rooms in Alarbi Abresha's house were all more or less replicas
of the best room shorn of its gilt.