Moulay-Idriss (9,000 inhabitants)]

But “Geschehen ist geschehen” is the sum of Oriental philosophy.  For centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep; then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and surrendered without a pretense of resistance.  Now the whole thing was over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured us that with the French uniform at our side we should be safe anywhere.

“The Aissaouas?” he explained.  “No, this is another sect, the Hamadchas, who are performing their ritual dance on the feast-day of their patron, the marabout Hamadch, whose tomb is in the Zerhoun.  The feast is celebrated publicly in the market-place of Moulay Idriss.”

As he spoke we came out into the market-place, and understood why there had been no crowd at the gate.  All the population was in the square and on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded hillside:  Moulay Idriss had better to do that day than to gape at a few tourists in dust-coats.

Short of Sfax, and the other coast cities of eastern Tunisia, there is surely not another town in North Africa as white as Moulay Idriss.  Some are pale blue and pinky yellow, like the Kasbah of Tangier, or cream and blue like Sale, but Tangier and Sale, for centuries continuously subject to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from Genoa and the Italian Riviera.  In the interior of the country, and especially in Morocco, where the whole color-scheme is much soberer than in Algeria and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a penitential shade of mud and ashes.

But Moulay Idriss, that afternoon, was as white as if its arcaded square had been scooped out of a big cream cheese.  The late sunlight lay like gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade, and above it, the crowded roofs, terraces and balconies packed with women in bright dresses looked like a flower-field on the edge of a marble quarry.

The bright dresses were as unusual a sight as the white walls, for the average Moroccan crowd is the color of its houses.  But the occasion was a special one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of doors, instead of being performed inside the building of the confraternity, the feminine population seizes the opportunity to burst into flower on the housetops.

[Illustration:  From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au Maroc

Moulay-Idriss—­the market-place]