Though I knew of the Kaid’s face being averted from him, and that he was about once more to take his fiddle up and walk, I had, out of politeness, to pretend my ignorance, and then he spoke.
“Yes, I was well received, and nightly the Kaid would send for me, and I discoursed to him of Persia, Turkey, and other countries which I had seen, and also of El Hind and China which I have not visited, but trust to visit before I call myself a traveller, and all went well and others envied me. Till, on a night, puffed up with pride, I let my tongue escape. Unruly member! (Here he drew it out and held it, like a slippery fish, between his finger and his thumb.) With it I told the Kaid that he might be as a great Sultan, but that I was greater, for was not I a Sultan of the mind? and since that time I have not stood once in the presence, and shortly I shall leave this place without a friend unless it be that you and this same noble Syrian, who speaks for you, can be counted in the number of the men who wish me well.”
He ceased and I determined later on to take the hint, and fell awatching a small brown tree-creeper, not larger than a wren, which ran along the branches of a walnut-tree, and put its head upon one side and looked at us as it had been a fashionable philosopher, and no doubt just as wise. The grove of walnuts, sound of the running stream, at which a large grey squirrel sat and drank, noise of the wind amongst the leaves, the distant glimpses of the snow-capped hills, the long sustained notes of the negroes singing in the fields, set me athinking upon some not impossible Almighty Power, a harmony in things, a not altogether improbable design in nature, and, in fact, embarked me on the train of thought which the deep-thinking author of the libretto of “Giroflée et Girofla” has typified as thoughts about “de l’eau, de l’amour, des roses,” etc., when the irruption of a scabby-headed boy summoned me back to earth.
He (the scabby-headed one) had heard I was a doctor of some repute, and had cured divers folks, as, indeed, I think I had, or at least medicined them out of self-conceit, and came to ask my help for the affliction which had come upon his head. Taking rather a hasty look, I almost had prescribed washing and an ointment with some butter mixed with sulphur, when I bethought me what was expected of a doctor in the country where we lived. So, after thinking carefully for a little space, I said, “This requires thought, come to the tent in two hours’ time (three hours were better), and I hope by then to have thought out, Inshallah, a fit medicine for your case.” Duly interpreted into Berber this satisfied him, and he promised to comply. Our _tertulia_ { 185} then dispersed, and we went back to sleep inside the tent, or resting on our rugs, to watch the constant passing stream of white or brown-dressed, bare-footed figures that, in Morocco, is always to be seen passing upon every road.