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Updated: June 9, 2025
This was the first Sahara city they had drawn near to, and their minds were full of memories of the stories of Batouch, told to them by the camp fire at night in the uninhabited places which, till now, had been their home: stories of the wealthy date merchants who trafficked here and dwelt in Oriental palaces, poor in aspect as seen from the dark and narrow streets, or zgags, in which they were situated, but within full of the splendours of Eastern luxury; of the Jew moneylenders who lived apart in their own quarter, rapacious as wolves, hoarding their gains, and practising the rites of their ancient and according to the Arabs detestable religion; of the marabouts, or sacred men, revered by the Mohammedans, who rode on white horses through the public ways, followed by adoring fanatics who sought to touch their garments and amulets, and demanded importunately miraculous blessings at their hands the hedgehog's foot to protect their women in the peril of childbirth; the scroll, covered with verses of the Koran and enclosed in a sheaf of leather, that banishes ill dreams at night and stays the uncertain feet of the sleep-walker; the camel's skull that brings fruit to the palm trees; the red coral that stops the flow of blood from a knife-wound of the dancing-girls glittering in an armour of golden pieces, their heads tied with purple and red and yellow handkerchiefs of silk, crowned with great bars of solid gold and tufted with ostrich feathers; of the dwarfs and jugglers who by night perform in the marketplace, contending for custom with the sorceresses who tell the fates from shells gathered by mirage seas; with the snake-charmers who are immune from the poison of serpents and the acrobats who come from far-off Persia and Arabia to spread their carpets in the shadow of the Agha's dwelling and delight the eyes of negro and Kabyle, of Soudanese and Touareg with their feats of strength; of the haschish smokers who, assembled by night in an underground house whose ceiling and walls were black as ebony, gave themselves up to day-dreams of shifting glory, in which the things of earth and the joys and passions of men reappeared, but transformed by the magic influence of the drug, made monstrous or fairylike, intensified or turned to voluptuous languors, through which the Ouled Nail floated like a syren, promising ecstasies unknown even in Baghdad, where the pale Circassian lifts her lustrous eyes, in which the palms were heavy with dates of solid gold, and the streams were gliding silver.
You are not responsible for its looking like a hedgehog's." "Hedgehogs haven't any hair," said Jacqueline, much hurt by the observation. "True, they have only prickles, which remind me of the susceptibility of your temper. I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically.
And presently, late in the night, they laid her body in a palanquin, and set the palanquin upon a running camel, and, while the dancers shrilled their lament amid the sands, they bore her away into the darkness of the dunes towards the south and the tents of her own people. The jackals laughed as she went by. But the hedgehog's foot was left lying upon the floor of her chamber.
Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero commanded him to do.
"And now set my brothers upon the maiden," Ben-Abid said to Sadok, gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied once more with the cord. Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black, and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog's foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her ebon eyebrows.
"Who calls me?" exclaimed the voice of a girl. And Halima came out of her door on the first terrace at the left, splendidly dressed for the dance in scarlet and gold, carrying two scarlet handkerchiefs in her hands, and with the hedgehog's foot dangling from her girdle of thin gold, studded with turquoises. Ben-Abid stood below in the court with Sadok by his side.
The hedgehog's first experience of snake-killing occurred late one evening, when she discovered a viper, some distance from its hole, coiled asleep on a bare patch of soil where the sunlight had lingered at the close of day. Her manner instantly changed; she became eager and alert.
For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was known that the hedgehog's foot had been blessed and endowed with magical powers by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
That is why this one is really awake now, only he has rolled himself up, and pretends to be asleep, because he's frightened." "Oh, the funny little thing!" said Una, bending down to see if she could catch a glimpse of the hedgehog's bright little eyes. "What do you think I'm going to do with it?" asked Tom. "Keep it?" suggested Una. "No," said the boy, "I'm going to give it to you."
"I still had eighty thousand francs in my possession, and at first I meant to live a remote and solitary life, to vegetate in some country district for the rest of my days; but misanthropy is no Catholic virtue, and there is a certain vanity lurking beneath the hedgehog's skin of the misanthrope. His heart does not bleed, it shrivels, and my heart bled from every vein.
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