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Then the populace closes in again, so quickly and densely that it seems impossible it could ever have been parted, and negro water-carriers, muffled women, beggars streaming with sores, sinewy and greasy "saints," Soudanese sorcerers hung with amulets made of sardine-boxes and hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women, scrofulous children with gazelle eyes and mangy skulls, and blind men tapping along with linked arms and howling out verses of the Koran, surge together in a mass drawn by irresistible suction to the point where the bazaars converge about the mosques of Moulay Idriss and El Kairouiyin.
Orderlies had evidently slept and had their meals there, for the stone floor was littered with straw, and empty bottles, sardine-boxes, and pieces of bread were lying about. But when I opened the door of the dining-room I could not help pausing for a moment to look at the strange sight before me.
We see those traces gleaming and glooming there, empty beer- and wine-bottles, devitalized sardine-boxes, osseous remains of fish, flesh, and fowl, scooped cheese-rinds, egg-shells, the buttons of defrauded raiment, and the parted rims of much-snatched-at and vigorously-squabbled-for straw hats.
Soups in billies, turkeys in milk-pans, salads in gourd-rinds, custards in cow-bells, jellies in sardine-boxes, plum-pudding in a kerosene case, vegetables, fruits, and cakes in kits of plaited flax; anything and everything was utilized that possibly could be.
How many pupils have passed through my hands and have reached the final stage in my old sardine-boxes as well as in their native burrows! I shall draw no conclusions from this check, which my scruples may attribute to some unknown cause.
There are, indeed, bits of hedgerow still left where the hawthorn tries to blossom in the spring, and dingy patches and corners of field where flowers used to grow; but these have nearly all disappeared, and instead of them heaps of rubbish, old kettles, empty sardine-boxes, and broken crockery are scattered about.
How many pupils have not passed through my hands and reached maturity in my old sardine-boxes as comfortably as in their natural burrows! I will not draw rash conclusions from this check; I am conscientious enough to ascribe it to another cause.
The middle of the room is entirely occupied by a great table of walnut- wood, on which are arranged bottles, test-tubes, and old sardine-boxes, which Fabre employs in order to watch the evolution of a thousand nameless or doubtful eggs, to observe the labours of their larvae, the creation and the hatching of cocoons, and the little miracles of metamorphosis, "after a germination more wonderful than that of the acorn which makes the oak."
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