Not being able to compliment him on his position, I kept silence.
“_C´est comme ça_,” he continued, speaking quickly. “I came away from Algiers because I could not bear the sight of it any more. _J´étais obligé de vivre dans un cercle trop étroit_” (he meant, perhaps, the halter). “European life did not suit my tastes. I felt the need of change.”
“And are you more contented now?” I inquired.
“Most content,” he answered, with affectation. “The country is lovely, Muley-el-Hassan is the best of sultans, the people are kind, I am a captain, I have a little shop, I exercise a small trade, I hunt, I fish, I make excursions into the mountains, I enjoy complete liberty. I would not go back to Europe, you see, for all the gold in the world.”
“Do you not wish to see your own country again? Have you forgotten even France?”
“What is France to me!” he replied. “For me France has no existence. Morocco is my country.” And he shrugged his shoulders.
His cynicism revolted me; I could scarcely believe it; I had the curiosity to probe him a little more deeply.
“Since you left Algeria,” I asked, “have you had no news of events in Europe?”
“_Pas un mot_,” he answered. “Here nobody knows any thing, and I am very glad not to know any thing.”
“You do not know, then, that there has been a great war between France and Prussia?”
He started. “_Qui a vaincu?_” he asked, quickly, fixing his eyes upon me.
He made a gesture of surprise. I told him in a few words of the disasters that had befallen France,—the invasion, the taking of Paris, the loss of the two provinces. He listened with his head bent down and his eyebrows knit; then he roused himself and said, with a kind of effort, “_C´est égal_—I have no country, it is no affair of mine,” and he bent his head again. I observed him steadily, and he saw it. “Adieu, Monsieur,” he said, abruptly, in an altered voice, and walked quickly away.
“All is not dead within him yet!” I thought, and was glad.
Meantime the artillery had ceased its fire, the Sultan had retired under a white pavilion at the foot of a tower, and the soldiers began to defile before him, unarmed, and one by one, at about twenty paces one from the other. As there was not beside the Sultan, or in front of the pavilion any officer to read the names, as with us, in order to certify the existence of every soldier on the rolls (and I am told there are no rolls in the army of Morocco), I could not understand the purpose of the review, unless it was for the Sultan’s amusement; and I was tempted to laugh. But, upon second thoughts, the primitive and poetic idea in the sight of that African monarch, high-priest, an absolute prince, young, gentle, and in all simplicity standing three hours alone in the shadow of his tent, and three times in every week seeing his soldiers passing before him one by one, and listening to the prayers and lamentations of his unhappy subjects inspired me instead with a feeling of respect. And since it was the last time that I should see him, I felt a sudden rush of sympathy toward him as I turned away. “Farewell,” I thought, “handsome and noble prince!” and as his gracious white figure disappeared for ever from my eyes, I felt a sensation in my breast as if, in that moment, it had been stamped upon my heart.