This inner region is less ruined than the mysterious vaulted structure,
and one of the palaces, being still reserved for the present Sultan's
use, cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallenged through desert
courts, gardens of cypress and olive where dried fountains and painted
summer-houses are falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed in long
empty façades. It was all the work of an eager and imperious old man,
who, to realize his dream quickly, built in perishable materials, but
the design, the dimensions, the whole conception, show that he had not
only heard of Versailles but had looked with his own eyes on Volubilis.

[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_

Meknez--the ruins of the palace of Moulay-Ismaël]

To build on such a scale, and finish the work in a single lifetime, even
if the materials be malleable and the life a long one, implies a command
of human labor that the other Sultan at Versailles must have envied. The
imposition of the _corvée_ was of course even simpler in Morocco than in
France, since the material to draw on was unlimited, provided one could
assert one's power over it; and for that purpose Ismaël had his Black
Army, the hundred and fifty thousand disciplined legionaries who enabled
him to enforce his rule over all the wild country from Algiers to
Agadir.

The methods by which this army were raised and increased are worth
recounting in Ezziani's words:

"A _taleb_[A] of Marrakech having shown the Sultan a register containing