In Morocco . nd I never came back to its wettiles and perpetual twilight without the sense ofplunging into a deep sea-pool. From far off, through circuitous corridors, camethe scent of citron-blossom and jasmine, with some-times a birds song before dawn, sometimes a fluteswail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzinin the night; but no sunlight reached the apartmentexcept in remote rays through the clerestory, andno air except through one or two broken panes. Sometimes, lying on my divan, and looking outthrough the vermilion doors, I used to surprise apair of swallows dropping down from
In Morocco . nd I never came back to its wettiles and perpetual twilight without the sense ofplunging into a deep sea-pool. From far off, through circuitous corridors, camethe scent of citron-blossom and jasmine, with some-times a birds song before dawn, sometimes a fluteswail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzinin the night; but no sunlight reached the apartmentexcept in remote rays through the clerestory, andno air except through one or two broken panes. Sometimes, lying on my divan, and looking outthrough the vermilion doors, I used to surprise apair of swallows dropping down from their nest inthe cedar-beams to preen themselves on the foun-tains edge or in the channels of the pavement; forthe roof was full of birds who came and wentthrough the broken panes of the clerestory. Usuallythey were my only visitors; but one morning just atdaylight I was waked by a soft tramp of bare feet,and saw, silhouetted against the cream-colouredwalls, a procession of eight tall negroes in linen [ 132 ]. MARRAKECII tunics, who filed noiselessly across tlic atriinn likea moving frieze of bronze. In that fantastic set-ting, and the hush of that twilight hour, the visionwas so like the picture of a Seraglio Tragedy/some fragment of a Delacroix or Decamps floatingup into the drowsy brain, that I almost fancied Ihad seen the ghosts of Ba-Ahmeds executionersrevisiting with dagger and bowstring the scene ofan unavenged crime. A cock crew, and they vanished . . and whenI made the mistake of asking what they had beendoing in my room at that hour I was told (as thoughit were the most natural thing in the world) thatthey were the municipal lam})-lighters of Tslarra-kech, whose duty it is to refill every morning thetwo hundred acetylene lamps lighting the palace ofthe Resident General. Such unforeseen aspects, inthis mysterious city, do the most ordinary domesticfunctions wear. [ 13^ 1 MARRAKECHIII THE BAZAARS Passing out of the enchanted circle of the Bahia itis startling to plunge
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1920
