Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/217

Rh cruelties of this black sultan with the white spot on his cheek and the flowing, gray beard. He was an extraordinary and somewhat terrible man with strong chameleon-like characteristics, knowing not only how to give the impression of being magnificent, liberal, considerate and even at times ashamed when in reality he was revengeful, miserly, severe, relentless and madly bold, but even changing the color of his face, which in moments of happiness became almost white and showed blue eyes, in contrast to which in moments of passion it was nearly black and was set with bloodshot eyes.

Some tribes even preserve in their proverbs and common sayings the memory of these particular characteristics of the terrible master, as for instance:

"Yesterday the sky was as bright as the face of Sidi Mulay Ismail but today it has been covered by a cloud as dark as the face of the sultan when anger flamed in his heart and drove the blood to his eyes."

Such was the man who left behind him this large quarter of the city with its surrounding belts of innumerable walls, where I wandered through the labyrinth of passages around his palaces, examined his hundreds of buildings, jostling one another in disorder, and strolled along the seemingly endless galleries where the miserly ruler stored the tribute of grain, dates, figs and fruit that was brought him by the conquered tribes and where he stabled his two thousand or more of mules and donkeys.

This man of contradictions right up to the time of his old age sprang lightly into the saddle, with one stroke of his sword cut off the heads of enemies and slaves, had