Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/69

Rh Berber does—I flung her on the bed with a curse that I had to tie my life to that of a slave. Incredible as it was to me she became happy and bright, though she continued to look upon me as strange and considered me unsound in mind. The family also regarded me with suspicion. Some weeks later she poisoned me with some herbs that are said to inspire love. Then I beat her and left the house.'

"Such was the story of my friend, who was laughed at, covered with abuse and soon compelled to leave our town. He crossed over to France, where he now works as a stevedore on the piers at Marseilles. And this, Madame, is the reason why I am not married." And thus Mahomet ben M'Hammed, smiling reminiscently and sadly, ended his explanation in answer to my wife's simple question.

Early the next morning we were once more in the town. This time we entered the Jewish quarter, where we passed through streets of dirty, low houses, swarming with people. Women with gaudy bonnets or kerchiefs on their heads and shawls over their shoulders chattered on the doorsteps, while old men with long beards and grave faces, clad in white bournouses that gave to them a biblical appearance, presided over the street shops. All the expressions, even those of the children, were sad and almost tragic, reminiscent of the sufferings which their forefathers had endured in coming to this land with its fierce sky, to these towns and villages where at dawn and at sunset the Moslems call upon the name of their bloody, merciless Prophet. They had come across the sea and scattered over the whole of North Africa, even to the