Evidently the Count was the great personage of Beni-Mora.  Batouch spoke of him with a convinced respect, describing him as fabulously rich, fabulously generous to the Arabs.

“He never gives to the French, Madame, but when he is here each Friday, upon our Sabbath, he comes to the gate with a bag of money in his hand, and he gives five franc pieces to every Arab who is there.”

“And what is he?  French?”

“He is Italian; but he is always travelling, and he has made gardens everywhere.  He has three in Africa alone, and in one he keeps many lions.  When he travels he takes six Arabs with him.  He loves only the Arabs.”

Domini began to feel interested in this wandering maker of gardens, who was a pilgrim over the world like Monte Cristo.

“Is he young?” she asked.

“No.”

“Married?”

“Oh, no!  He is always alone.  Sometimes he comes here and stays for three months, and is never once seen outside the garden.  And sometimes for a year he never comes to Beni-Mora.  But he is here now.  Twenty Arabs are always working in the garden, and at night ten Arabs with guns are always awake, some in a tent inside the door and some among the trees.

“Then there is danger at night?”

“The garden touches the desert, and those who are in the desert without arms are as birds in the air without wings.”

They had come out from among the houses now into a broad, straight road, bordered on the left by land that was under cultivation, by fruit trees, and farther away by giant palms, between whose trunks could be seen the stony reaches of the desert and spurs of grey-blue and faint rose-coloured mountains.  On the right was a shady garden with fountains and stone benches, and beyond stood a huge white palace built in the Moorish style, and terraced roofs and a high tower ornamented with green and peacock-blue tiles.  In the distance, among more palms, appeared a number of low, flat huts of brown earth.  The road, as far as the eyes could see, stretched straight forward through enormous groves of palms, whose feathery tops swayed gently in the light wind that blew from the desert.  Upon all things rained a flood of blue and gold.  A blinding radiance made all things glad.

“How glorious light is!” Domini exclaimed, as she looked down the road to the point where its whiteness was lost in the moving ocean of the trees.

Batouch assented without enthusiasm, having always lived in the light.

“As we return from the garden we will visit the tower,” he said, pointing to the Moorish palace.  “It is a hotel, and is not yet open, but I know the guardian.  From the tower Madame will see the whole of Beni-Mora.  Here is the negro village.”