boys jamming their naked heels into the ribs of world-weary donkeys.

The Sultan rode into the court below us, and Vizier and chamberlains,
snowy-white against the scarlet line of the Guards, hurried forward to
kiss his draperies, his shoes, his stirrup. Descending from his velvet
saddle, still entranced, he paced across the tiles between a double line
of white servitors bowing to the ground. White pigeons circled over him
like petals loosed from a great orchard, and he disappeared with his
retinue under the shadowy arcade of the audience chamber at the back of
the court.

[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_

The Sultan entering Marrakech in state]

At this point one of the favourites called us in from the _mirador_. The
door had just opened to admit an elderly woman preceded by a respectful
group of girls. From the newcomer's round ruddy face, her short round
body, the round hands emerging from her round wrists, an inexplicable
majesty emanated; and though she too was less richly arrayed than the
favourites she carried her headdress of striped gauze like a crown.

This impressive old lady was the Sultan's mother. As she held out her
plump wrinkled hand to Mme. Lyautey and spoke a few words through the
interpretess one felt that at last a painted window of the _mirador_ had
been broken, and a thought let into the vacuum of the harem. What
thought, it would have taken deep insight into the processes of the Arab
mind to discover; but its honesty was manifest in the old Empress's
voice and smile. Here at last was a woman beyond the trivial
dissimulations, the childish cunning, the idle cruelties of the harem.