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They hung Tonio's Maestro in the middle, with Tita's donkey-boy on one side and the policeman on the other. Pablo's Judas was a policeman too, and they put him on the other side of the donkey-boy. Then Pablo borrowed a match from a boy and set fire to the first cracker on his policeman. Fizz-fizz-bang! off went the first fire-cracker. Fizz-fizz-bang! off went the second one.
Mohammed can do less than Mammon to-day for the infidel's ease and comfort in Palestine. The unholy little yellow god works his modern miracles even in the Holy Land. You have but to speak the word, and show your purse or letter of credit, in Beirut or Jaffa, and, as suddenly as if you had rubbed Aladdin's lamp, a retinue will be at your door to do your bidding. First a dragoman, with great baggy trousers of silk, a little gold-embroidered jacket over a colored vest, a girdle whose most ample folds form an arsenal of no mean proportions, and over the swarthy face, reposing among the black, glossy curls of a well-poised head, the red Turkish fez; or, if Ali has an ambition to be thought possessed of much piety of the orthodox Islamic type, the fez gives way to a turban, white, or green if he be a pilgrim from Mecca. Behind this important personage, as much a feature of the East as the Sphinx or the Pyramids, stand at a respectful distance, making profound salutations, a cook, probably a Greek or Italian, three muleteers, and a donkey-boy. Behind them still are two horses, alas! not blooded Arabs madly champing their bits, one for yourself and the other for Ali. Three mules bear patiently on their backs, always more or less raw, the canvas and poles of the two tents. In the rear is a small donkey, covered all over with culinary utensils, nibbling fat cactus-leaves with undisguised satisfaction. For a daily expenditure scarcely greater than is necessary to keep soul and body together at a fashionable New York hotel on the American plan, you become the commander of this company, within certain limits around which there are lines as definite and as impassable as if drawn by an Irish servant of some years' experience in the United States. You must not travel more than thirty miles a day; you must not change the route agreed upon, unless roads become impassable; and there are other, minor regulations, to which you are expected to submit, and, if you do, your progress through the land, if not triumphant, will be at least comfortable. You will find every day at noon, spread under some wide-armed tree, a cold lunch that even a somewhat difficult taste would consider fairly appetizing; and at nightfall you dismount before the door of your tent and sit down to a dinner of many courses, which to a stomach jounced for ten hours over a saddle seems a very fair dinner indeed. Your breakfast is what a Frenchman would call a déjeûner
"In the days when I was practising in Cairo, I was accustomed, in the February of each year, to go up the Nile as far as Luxor, and thence I proceeded, in company with some friends, to visit the tombs and temples in the desert. These trips across the sands are made on donkey-back. The last time I went to Luxor I hired a young donkey-boy, whose white donkey Rameses was stronger than the others.
Then he bent again, and laid his forehead once more against the ground. Mrs. Armine drew back. She did not know exactly why, but she felt for an instant chilled in the burning sunshine. "Hamza is praying," she said to Ibrahim, who stood calmly by the carpet. "Suttinly!" he replied. "When Hamza stop, him pray. Hamza is very good donkey-boy." Mrs. Armine asked no more questions.
Then, in the golden warmth, the dream settled down once more about him and upon him. Why hurry? Why be disturbed? The alertness seemed to fade, to dissolve in his mind. He turned his eyes away from the distant mast, he got upon the donkey, and was taken gently to the temple. No tourists were there. He sent the donkey-boy away, saying he would walk back to the river.
I called to the dragoman, and said: "Imam, Hassan won't bring up my donkey." Imam looked at him a moment in silence, then with a lightning slap on the cheek he laid him flat in the sand. I was horrified. But to my amazement Hassan hopped up and began to kiss my sleeve and to apologize, saying, "Very good lady. Bad donkey-boy. Hassan sorry. Very good lady." We have had three Christmases this year.
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the dyer caught hold of the donkey-boy and the donkey-boy caught hold of the dyer and they beat and cursed each other till the folk collected round them and one of them asked, "What is the matter, O Master Mohammed?"
Unhappy patient beasts! usually covered with raws and galls, that are urged forward at a gallop by the remorseless stick, or even by the goad, for the Neapolitan donkey-boy is absolutely callous to the feelings of his animal.
What he saw satisfied him, for he pulled the door tight again, and as the footfall of old Jaggs came nearer the door, the donkey-boy flew upstairs with extraordinary rapidity. "I will come later, madame," he said, when he had received the change. "I must take my donkey into Monte Carlo."
Very well, then, he was there in the sun ready. "We'll never part from Gaspare," Maurice thought, as he looked and understood. He saw no other figure. The donkey-boy had perhaps forgotten his mission or had started late. Maurice chafed bitterly at the delay. But he could not well leave his guest on this first day of his coming to Monte Amato, more especially after the events of the preceding day.
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