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In the bazaars all these peoples meet and mingle: cattle-dealers, olive-growers, peasants from the Atlas, the Souss and the Draa, Blue Men of the Sahara, blacks from Senegal and the Soudan, coming in to trade with the wool-merchants, tanners, leather-merchants, silk-weavers, armourers, and makers of agricultural implements. Dark, fierce and fanatical are these narrow souks of Marrakech.
There are the ghosts of royal progresses, kings and queens, and wonderful pageantry gorgeous in array; decorously ambling cardinals and abbots with their trains of servitors; hawking parties with hawks and attendants; soldiers after Sedgemoor in pursuit of Monmouth's ill-fated followers; George IV. and his gay courtiers on the Brighton road; beaux and beauties in their well-appointed carriages bound for Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham, or Bath; splendid teams with crowded coaches, and great covered waggons laden with merchandise; the highwayman at dusk in quest of belated travellers, and companies of farmers and cattle-dealers riding home from market together for safety.
Often the graziers that do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when they are coming back, and the dealers don't want their passes. They do very well. They'll bring back £7 and £10.
Cattle-dealers, with a reputation as judges of fat stock at auctions, have to be very careful not to let inexperienced butchers see them bidding, because the latter will bid on the strength of the dealer's estimate of value, arguing that the animal must be worth more to himself as a butcher, than to the dealer who has to sell again.
Who knows but the posterity of Solomon may be retailing old clothes, and the heirs of the Nebuchadnezzar dynasty still exist somewhere perhaps among our graziers or cattle-dealers, our keepers of dairies or secretaries of agricultural associations. The line of Tamerlane may have ended in a grave-digger, and that of Frederick Barbarossa in a hair-dresser.
Those sons of peers may faintly realise his position whose parents have hesitated whether to make statesmen or cattle-dealers of them. "I don't mind telling you," the stranger said at last, "that your case has been under consideration. When we left the Embankment my intention was to dispose of you in a doorway. But your story moves me strangely.
And when he walked back to the tavern, looking at the houses of the rich publicans, cattle-dealers, and blacksmiths, he reflected how nice it would be to steal by night into some rich man's house! In the hospital yard there stands a small lodge surrounded by a perfect forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp.
They were, however, acute and wise in their generation; intelligent cattle-dealers, on whom it would have been a matter of some difficulty to impose an unsound horse, or a cow older than was intimated by her horn-rings, even when conscientiously dressed up for sale by the ingenious aid of the file or burning-iron.
I didn't want this place to be dull just because half the village is enjoying itself somewhere else." It had been market day at Arad, and at about five o'clock Klara and her father became very busy. Cattle-dealers and pig-merchants, travellers and pedlars, dropped in for a glass of silvorium and a chat with the good-looking Jewess.
And what appetites these yeomen and cattle-dealers have got, to be sure! And if you had a few tramps across the "Broads" you would not wonder at it, for hunger is soon the predominant feeling. The dancing, too, is a study; country dances, reels, and jigs following each other in such quick succession, that the band in the gallery at the far end do not have any too easy a time of it.
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