Extremely nervous was the hand which the painter _malgre lui_ applied to the unlooked-for task. From the laborious travail of his brain issued at length an odd mass of arabesques with which the walls were somehow covered. His invention exhausted, he awaited in an agony of fear the inspection of his Turkish master. He came, and was enchanted. The painter was free, and the bey observed: "The dog wanted to deceive me: I knew that all the Christians could paint." You are amazed to find, in this nest of Islamite savagery and among these wild rocks, the uttermost accent of modern French politeness. Your presence is a windfall in quarters so retired, and you sit among orange plants and straying gazelles, while the military band throws softly out against the inaccessible crags the famous tower-scene from the fourth act of _Il Trovatore_. As night draws on, tired of your explorations, you seek a Moorish bath. Let no tourist, experienced only in the effeminate imitations of the hummum to be found in New York or London, expect similar considerate treatment in Algeria. He will be more likely to receive the attention of the M'zabite bather after the fashion narrated in the following paragraph, which is a quotation from an English journalist in the land of the Kabyles: "We were told to sit down upon a marble seat in the middle of the hall, which we had no sooner done than we became sensible of a great increase of heat: after this each of us was taken into a closet of milder temperature, where, after placing a white cloth on the floor and taking off our napkins, they laid us down, leaving us to the further operations of two naked, robust negroes. These men, newly brought from the interior of Africa, were ignorant of Arabic; so I could not tell them in what way I wished to be treated, and they handled me as roughly as if I had been a Moor inured to hardship. Kneeling with one knee upon the ground, each took me by a leg and began rubbing the soles of my feet with a pumice stone. After this operation on my feet, they put their hands into a small bag and rubbed me all over with it as hard as they could. The distortions of my countenance must have told them what I endured, but they rubbed on, smiling at each other, and sometimes giving me an encouraging look, indicating by their gestures the good it would do me. While they were thus currying me they almost drowned me by throwing warm water upon me with large silver vessels, which were in the basin under a cock fastened in the wall. When this was over they raised me up, putting my head under the cock, by which means the water flowed all over my body; and, as if this was not sufficient, my attendants continued plying their vessels. Then, having dried me with very fine napkins, they each of them very respectfully kissed my hand. I considered this as a sign that my torment was over, and was going to dress myself, when one of the negroes, grimly smiling, stopped me till the other returned with a kind