The Empress Mother chatted for a while with Mme. Lyautey, asking about the Resident General’s health, enquiring for news of the war, and saying, with an emotion perceptible even through the unintelligible words:  “All is well with Morocco as long as all is well with France.”  Then she withdrew, and we were summoned again to the mirador.

This time it was to see a company of officers in brilliant uniforms advancing at a trot across the plain from Rabat.  At sight of the figure that headed them, so slim, erect and young on his splendid chestnut, with a pale blue tunic barred by the wide orange ribbon of the Cherifian Order, salutes pealed forth again from the slope above the palace and the Black Guard presented arms.  A moment later General Lyautey and his staff were riding in at the gates below us.  On the threshold of the inner court they dismounted, and moving to the other side of our balcony we followed the next stage of the ceremony.  The Sultan was still seated in the audience chamber.  The court officials still stood drawn up in a snow-white line against the snow-white walls.  The great dignitaries advanced across the tiles to greet the General, then they fell aside, and he went forward alone, followed at a little distance by his staff.  A third of the way across the court he paused, in accordance with the Moroccan court ceremonial, and bowed in the direction of the arcaded room; a few steps farther he bowed again, and a third time on the threshold of the room.  Then French uniforms and Moroccan draperies closed in about him, and all vanished into the shadows of the audience hall.

Our audience too seemed to be over.  We had exhausted the limited small talk of the harem, had learned from the young beauties that, though they were forbidden to look on at the ceremony, the dancers and singers would come to entertain them presently, and had begun to take leave when a negress hurried in to say that his Majesty begged Mme. Lyautey and her friends to await his arrival.  This was the crowning incident of our visit, and I wondered with what Byzantine ritual the Anointed One fresh from the exercise of his priestly functions would be received among his women.

The door opened, and without any announcement or other preliminary flourish a fat man with a pleasant face, his djellabah stretched over a portly front, walked in holding a little boy by the hand.  Such was his Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef, despoiled of sacramental burnouses and turban, and shuffling along on bare yellow-slippered feet with the gait of a stout elderly gentleman who has taken off his boots in the passage preparatory to a domestic evening.

The little Prince, one of his two legitimate sons, was dressed with equal simplicity, for silken garments are worn in Morocco only by musicians, boy-dancers and other hermaphrodite fry.  With his ceremonial raiment the Sultan had put off his air of superhuman majesty, and the expression of his round pale face corresponded with the plainness of his dress.  The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince.  We could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in Morocco, as well as the only one into which a breath of the outer world ever came.