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What a healthy, free, aristocratic life, combining feudal dignity with educated zest, a wise man could lead there if he had an establishment of, say, three hundred slaves, a private band, a bevy of dancing girls, Bruzeaud for chef, an extensive library, sixteen saddle-horses, and relays of jolly fellows from Gibraltar to help him chase the wild boar and tame bores, eat couscoussu, and drink green-tea well sweetened.
Beside the silent, gliding, ghost-like Mahometan women and the Hottentot Venus, you have Rebecca in gaudy kerchief and Doña Dolores in silken skirt and lace mantilla from neighbouring Spain. In the mingling crowd all is novelty, all is noise, all is queer and shifting and diversified. The hotel where we put up was owned by Bruzeaud, formerly a messman of a British regiment.
The beds were clean, Bruzeaud was a good cook, the waiter was attentive and smiled perpetually, which made up for his stupidity; we had a single agreeable fellow-guest in a Frenchman, who spoke Arabic, and had lived in the city of Morocco as a pretended follower of the Prophet; and, besides, there was that dry undoctored champagne, which it is permissible to drink at all meals in Africa.
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