as soon as the mullah had left, led me back from the door to the interior of the shop and whispered:
"It was the mullah who spoke. I was silent. Remember well, Sidi, that I was silent throughout it all."
Hafid was also a little afraid and spoke with feeling, as we left the shop:
"You saw that the merchant lowered the blinds and locked the door when the alem began to speak so wildly. He gave vent to evil thoughts, very evil indeed."
"But I presume he spoke only as people here think."
"Not all, sir, not all," he warmly protested, looking almost beseechingly into my eyes.
After this talk among Moorish antiquities and beautiful Koran bindings I was depressed and could not shake off the strong impression which the words of the Moslem scholar had made upon me. I could not fail to recognize the justness of some of the Eastern man's statements, yet at the same time the foreboding of coming events that might again rock all humanity frightened and saddened me. I had the strong conviction that, even if I were a citizen of one of the nations most inimical to France, I could not accuse her, after what I had already seen, of any serious dereliction in her colonization policy in Africa. Perhaps, from the standpoint of the purely material exploitation of the country, the French policy is not energetic enough, a fact that may be explained by many and various reasons, one of which is indubitably the general reluctance of the French peasant to leave his native land. On the other hand, the French have chosen a course well adapted to our stormy times, in that it does
