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At these words; which the black-cloaked battalion received with applause, Ali thought himself betrayed, and looked around with doubt and mistrust.
The organ began a solemn dirge as a black-cloaked cortege came through the aisle, and it was with amazement that the bride discovered it to be formed of her oldest friends, bent, withered; paired, man and woman, as in mockery while behind, with white face, gleaming eyes, disordered hair, and halting step, came the bridegroom, in his shroud. "Come," he said, "let us be married.
I at first doubted whether it were not a mummy curiously preserved, but it moved, and I saw that it was alive. It was another of these black-cloaked old men, and, as I regarded his quaint physiognomy, his obsolete garb, and the hideous and sinister objects by which he was surrounded, I began to persuade myself that I had come upon the arch-mage who ruled over this magical fraternity.
By the light of the candles the shadows now took shape, the one from the other, and twelve black-cloaked and hooded figures stole forward, also masked to the lips. They passed one by one before the seated mask, touching his hand lightly, fleetingly, as one dipping the fingers into holy water, and then around the table to their seats, each in turn, until all were placed.
At these words; which the black-cloaked battalion received with applause, Ali thought himself betrayed, and looked around with doubt and mistrust.
Its houses with their mansard roofs and boarded windows bent their heads together like mutes at a wake, black-cloaked and hooded; seldom one showed a light; never one betrayed by any sound the life that lurked behind its jealous blinds.
Even great men in the East rise early; so, when I arrived before the castle of the great Druze chief at six o'clock of a summer's morning, I was not surprised to find a crowd of black-cloaked and white-turbaned mountaineers already waiting for an audience of his grace; nor yet, when I had gained admittance as a favoured person, to find the chief himself afoot and wide awake.
The tourists who have come to-night, and upon whom have pounced the black-cloaked Bedouin guides, wear cap and ulster or furred greatcoat; their intrusion here seems almost an offence; but, alas, such visitors become more numerous in each succeeding year.
The organ began a solemn dirge as a black-cloaked cortege came through the aisle, and it was with amazement that the bride discovered it to be formed of her oldest friends, bent, withered; paired, man and woman, as in mockery while behind, with white face, gleaming eyes, disordered hair, and halting step, came the bridegroom, in his shroud. "Come," he said, "let us be married.
It was monotonous lying all day in the tower, seeing only Titiaca, and now and then the black-cloaked keeper, stiff, silent, and solemn, and polite. But the days went by, and by-and-by we began to crawl out and lie in the seaward shadow, and sometimes under the banana tree, where the little black monkey loped around melancholy. We grew better.
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