and thrummings; their reiteration of monotony awakens tremulous echoes on
the human diaphragm and stirs up hazy, primeval mischiefs.

And this morning there arrived a blind singer, or bard; he was led by two
boys, who accompanied his extemporaneous verses--one of them tapping with
a pebble on an empty sardine-tin, while the other belaboured a beer-bottle
with a rusty nail: both solemn as archangels; there was also a
professional accompanist, who screwed his mouth awry and blew sideways
into a tall flute, his eyes half-closed in ecstatic rapture. Arab gravity
never looks better than during inanely grotesque performances of this
kind; in such moments one cannot help loving them, for these are the
little episodes that make life endurable.

[Illustration: At the Termid]

The music was not altogether original; it reminded me, with its mechanical
punctuations, of a concerto by Paderewski which contains an exquisite
movement between the piano and kettledrum--since the flute, which ought to
have supported the voice, was apparently dumb, although the artist puffed
out his cheeks as if his life depended upon it. Only after creeping quite
close to the performers could I discern certain wailful breathings; this
brave instrument, all splotched with variegated colours, gave forth a
succession of anguished and asthmatic whispers, the very phantom of a
song, like the wind sighing through the branches of trees.




_Chapter IV_