Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/265

 "faked," as the critics last quoted insinuate—even if a certain considerable percentage of these grunting contortionists have the perfunctory air of "supers" at a piastre a day, and among them you recognise unmistakably typical specimens of the bazaar-tout, the street dragoman out at elbows, and other worthy or unworthy citizens, certainly not affiliated to any religious order of Islam—what then? Mabille itself, that once famous temple-grove of the "great goddess Lubricity," could not in its later days dispense with the services of hired ministrants for the due performance of its saltatory ritual, and had to supplement the declining zeal of its habitués by the mercenary agility of the calicot and the cocotte masquerading as the grisette. And, anyhow, the performers in the little monastic courtyard of the Kasr-el-Ain Mosque, unlike those who disported themselves in the sylvan shades of the Parisian pleasure-garden, can at least show a leaven of bonâ-fide devotees.