“I hope that within a little time, O Joanna, you will be persuaded that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and that I am sprung from the blood of the Moors of Garnata, as then you will no longer refuse to take me for a husband, you and your maid Johar, and to become Moors.  What a glory to you, after having been married to a Genoui, and given birth to Genouillos, to receive for a husband a Moor like me, and to bear him children of the blood of Garnata.  What a glory too for Johar, how much better than to marry a vile Jew, even like Hayim Ben Atar, or your cook Sabia, both of whom I could strangle with two fingers, for am I not Hammin Widdir Moro de Garnata, el hombre mas valido be Tanger?” He then shouldered his barrel and departed.

“Is that Mulatto really what he pretends to be?” said I to Joanna; “is he a descendant of the Moors of Granada?”

“He always talks about the Moors of Granada when he is mad with majoon or aguardiente,” interrupted, in bad French, the old man whom I have before described, and in the same croaking voice which I had heard chanting in the morning.  “Nevertheless it may be true, and if he had not heard something of the kind from his parents, he would never have imagined such a thing, for he is too stupid.  As I said before, it is by no means impossible:  many of the families of Granada settled down here when their town was taken by the Christians, but the greater part went to Tunis.  When I was there, I lodged in the house of a Moor who called himself Zegri, and was always talking of Granada and the things which his forefathers had done there.  He would moreover sit for hours singing romances of which I understood not one word, praised be the mother of God, but which he said all related to his family; there were hundreds of that name in Tunis, therefore why should not this Hammin, this drunken water-carrier, be a Moor of Granada also?  He is ugly enough to be emperor of all the Moors.  O the accursed canaille, I have lived amongst them for my sins these eight years, at Oran and here.  Monsieur, do you not consider it to be a hard case for an old man like myself, who am a Christian, to live amongst a race who know not God, nor Christ, nor anything holy?”

“What do you mean,” said I, “by asserting that the Moors know not God?  There is no people in the world who entertain sublimer notions of the uncreated eternal God than the Moors, and no people have ever shown themselves more zealous for his honour and glory; their very zeal for the glory of God has been and is the chief obstacle to their becoming Christians.  They are afraid of compromising his dignity by supposing that he ever condescended to become man.  And with respect to Christ, their ideas even of him are much more just than those of the Papists, they say he is a mighty prophet, whilst, according to the others, he is either a piece of bread or a helpless infant.  In many points of religion the Moors are wrong, dreadfully wrong, but are the Papists less so?  And one of their practices sets them immeasurably below the Moors in the eyes of any unprejudiced person:  they bow down to idols, Christian idols if you like, but idols still, things graven of wood and stone and brass, and from these things, which can neither hear, nor speak, nor feel, they ask and expect to obtain favours.”