But he remembers and always will remember the city in its picturesque aspects.  How can he forget Moorish hospitality, so lavishly exercised in patios where the hands of architect and gardener meet—­those delightful gatherings of friends whose surroundings are recalled when he sees, even in the world of the West—­

    Groups under the dreaming garden trees,
    And the full moon, and the white evening star.

He will never forget the Kutubia tower flanking the mosque of the Library, with its three glittering balls that are solid gold, if you care to believe the Moors (and who should know better!), though the European authorities declare they are but gilded copper.  He will hear, across all intervening sea and lands, the sonorous voices of the three blind mueddins who call True Believers to prayer from the adjacent minarets.  By the side of the tower, that is a landmark almost from R’hamna’s far corner to the Atlas Mountains, Yusuf ibn Tachfin, who built Marrakesh, enjoys his long, last sleep in a grave unnoticed and unhonoured by the crowds of men from strange, far-off lands, who pass it every day.  Yet, if the conqueror of Fez and troubler of Spain could rise from nine centuries of rest, he would find but little change in the city he set on the red plain in the shadow of the mountains.  The walls of his creation remain:  even the broken bridge over the river dates, men say, from his time, and certainly the faith and works of the people have not altered greatly.  Caravans still fetch and carry from Fez in the north to Timbuctoo and the banks of the Niger, or reach the Bab-er-rubb with gold and ivory and slaves from the eastern oases, that France has almost sealed up.  The saints’ houses are there still, though the old have yielded to the new.  Storks are privileged, as from earliest times, to build on the flat roofs of the city houses, and, therefore, are still besought by amorous natives to carry love’s greeting to the women who take their airing on the house-tops in the afternoon.  Berber from the highlands; black man from the Draa; wiry, lean, enduring trader from Tarudant and other cities of the Sus; patient frugal Saharowi from the sea of sand,—­no one of them has altered greatly since the days of the renowned Yusuf.  And who but he among the men who built great cities in days before Saxon and Norman had met at Senlac, could look to find his work so little scarred by time, or disguised by change?  Twelve miles of rampart surround the city still, if we include the walls that guard the Sultan’s maze garden, and seven of the many gates Ibn Tachfin knew are swung open to the dawn of each day now.