He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily, “Accursed old Israel!  Get on home to your mother!” Then, turning quickly round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.

He would go past the Saints’ Houses in the public ways, and at the sound of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white walls crying “Allah!  Allah!  Allah!” would suddenly change their cry to “Arrah!  Arrah!  Arrah!” “Go on!  Go on!  Go on!”

He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.

His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God’s displeasure.  The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight of him.  Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber—­they all despised him!

Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed him.  It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his soul.  He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.

There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form of warfare.  The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other, the better for his person.

It was the Governor of Tetuan.  His name was El Arby, but he was known as Ben Aboo, the son of his father.  That father had been none other than the late Sultan.  Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman, though by another mother, a negro slave.  To be a Sultan’s brother in Morocco is not to be a Sultan’s favourite, but a possible aspirant to his throne.  Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan’s army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.  In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo’s attention had been first directed to that town.  When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.  The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise.  There was a Basha at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty.  The good man was summoned to the Sultan’s presence, accused of appropriating the Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.