Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/166

150 by the conventional ceremonies and duties of court regime, the sultan has always, however, time to institute certain changes and reforms in the student-life, sometimes nothing more drastic, it must be admitted, than the promulgation of an edict on the repainting of the tholba's cells or on the increase of the daily bread-ration granted by the authorities of the medersas to the students. During this one day of power the law of the students runs unrestricted throughout the whole town, acknowledged and tolerated even by the Bashaw of Fez, as he knows that at midnight the dynasty of the sultan of a day will crumble and disappear without a trace, save for the memory of an unusual commotion in the streets and for heaps of mutton-bones and other broken meats of the feast.