Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/262

246 Princess Conti back to the foot of the sky-challenging ranges of snow and the palace beside the lovely lake. Meanwhile the sultan awaited his would-be-bride in his Marrakesh palace, where he filled his impatient hours with watching fights between lions or tigers and the strongest of his slaves armed only with curved kumias. One night a messenger brought to the sultan a script from his Grand Vizier in which his representative made it known to him that the Princess Conti had deigned to mock the great monarch. For the first time in his life the white spot on the Sultan's cheek turned as black as a piece of coal. He gave a knife-thrust at the messenger who could dare to bring him such tidings, jumped on his horse and rode for the mountains. For five days no one saw, or at least lived to tell of having seen, Mulay Ismail, for he killed every man he met upon his way.

"When the vizier' arrived during these days of the sultan's absence, he immediately set out and finally found his master through discovering his horse outside a mountain cave. After they had talked long within the cavern's fastnesses, the sultan returned to Marrakesh and ordered two mourning cypresses planted near the pavilion on the bank of the lake as above a tomb, the tomb of his flouted love. He never went again to Menar, where the park was soon overrun by grass and weeds, the walls began to crumble and the palace ultimately fell in ruins, the swans flew away or died and men feared to enter the accursèd grounds.

"After the death of Mulay Ismail other sultans partly reconstructed Menar, Abd er-Rahman finishing the work. Yet over it all the two black cypresses ever stood out as