Several dowagers seemed scarcely to be able to breathe from heat, and the plethora of their own well-fed and pampered flesh.  We had now music, and several attempts were made to get up the indecent Moorish dance, which, however, was forbidden as too vulgar for such fashionable Jews, and honoured by the presence of Europeans.  Not much pleased with this spectacle, I looked out of the window into the patio, or court-yard, where I saw a couple of butchers’ boys slaughtering a bullock for the evening carousal.  A number of boys were dipping their hands in the blood, and making with it the representation of an outspread hand on the doors, posts and walls, for the purpose of keeping off “the evil eye,” (el ojo maligno,) and so ensuring good luck to the new married couple.

I then mounted the house-top to see a game played by the young men.  Here, on the flat roof, was assembled a court, with a sultan sitting in the midst.  Various prisoners were tried and condemned.  Two or three of the greatest culprits were then secured and dragged down to the ladies, the officers of justice informing them that, if no one stepped forward to rescue them, it was the sultan’s orders that they should be imprisoned.  Several young Jewesses now clamourously demanded their release.  It is understood that these compassionate maidens who, on such occasions, step forward to the rescue, and take one of the young men by the hand, are willing to accept of the same when it may hereafter be offered to them in marriage, so the contagion of wedding-feasts spreads, and one marriage makes many.

I now proceed to the supper-table of the men, where the party ate and drank to gluttonous satiety.  Several rabbis were hired to chant, over the supper-table, prayers composed of portions of Scripture, and legends of the Talmud.

The dinning noise of bad music, and horrible screaming, called singing, with the surfeit of the feast, laid me up for two days afterwards.  The men supped by themselves, and the women of course were also apart.

My host, anxious that I should see all, insisted upon my going to have a peep at the ladies whilst they were supping.  Unlike us men, who sat up round a table, because there were several Europeans among us, the women lay sprawling and rolling on carpets and couches.

In their own allotted apartments, these gorgeous daughters of Israel looked still more huge and enormous, feasting almost to repletion, like so many princesses of the royal orgies of Belshazzar.  But this was a native wedding, and, of course, when we consider the education of these Barbary women, we must expect, when they have drink like the men, white spirits for protracted hours until midnight, the proprieties of society are easily dispensed with.  Happily the class of women, who so kept up the feast, were all said to be married, the maidens having gone home with the bride.