into a cul-de-sac blocked by a high building.  On the right was another building, one of those blind mysterious house-fronts of Fez that seem like a fragment of its ancient fortifications.  Clients and servants lounged on the stone benches built into the wall; it was evidently the house of an important person.  A charming youth with intelligent eyes waited on the threshold to receive us; he was one of the sons of the house, the one who had “studied in Algeria” and knew how to talk to visitors.  We followed him into a small arcaded patio hemmed in by the high walls of the house.  On the right was the usual long room with archways giving on the court.  Our host, a patriarchal personage, draped in fat as in a toga, came toward us, a mountain of majestic muslins, his eyes sparkling in a swarthy silver-bearded face.  He seated us on divans and lowered his voluminous person to a heap of cushions on the step leading into the court, and the son who had studied in Algeria instructed a negress to prepare the tea.

Across the patio was another arcade closely hung with unbleached cotton.  From behind it came the sound of chatter, and now and then a bare brown child in a scant shirt would escape, and be hurriedly pulled back with soft explosions of laughter, while a black woman came out to readjust the curtains.

There were three of these negresses, splendid bronze creatures, wearing white djellabahs over bright-coloured caftans, striped scarves knotted about their large hips, and gauze turbans on their crinkled hair.  Their wrists clinked with heavy silver bracelets, and big circular earrings danced in their purple ear-lobes.  A languor lay on all the other inmates of the household, on the servants and hangers-on squatting in the shade under the arcade, on our monumental host and his smiling son; but the three negresses, vibrating with activity, rushed continually from the curtained chamber to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the master’s reception-room, bearing on their pinky-blue palms trays of Britannia metal with tall glasses and fresh bunches of mint, shouting orders to dozing menials, and calling to each other from opposite ends of the court; and finally the stoutest of the three, disappearing from view, reappeared suddenly on a pale green balcony overhead, where, profiled against a square of blue sky, she leaned over in a Veronese attitude and screamed down to the others like an excited parrot.

In spite of their febrile activity and tropical bird-shrieks, we waited in vain for tea; and after a while our host suggested to his son that I might like to visit the ladies of the household.  As I had expected, the young man led me across the patio, lifted the cotton hanging and introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left.  Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a number of pale children scrambled.