Through the doorway from the marble _entresol_ where he stood Habib could see his father, cross-legged on a dais, with the notary. They sat hand in hand like big children, conversing gravely. With them was the _caid_ of Kairwan, the _cadi_, ben Iskhar, and a dark-skinned cousin from the oases of the Djerid in the south. Their garments shone; there was perfume in their beards. On a rostrum beyond and above the crowded heads the musicians swayed at their work--_tabouka_ players with strong, nervous thumbs; an oily, gross lutist; an organist, watching everything with the lizard eyes of the hashish taker. Among them, behind a taborette piled with bait of food and drink, the Jewish dancing woman from Algiers lolled in her cushions, a drift of white disdain.... He saw it all through a kind of mist. It was as if time had halted, and he was still at the steaming _hammam_ of the afternoon, his spirit and his flesh undone, and all about him in the perfumed vapour of the bath the white bodies of his boyhood comrades glimmering luminous and opalescent. His flesh was still asleep, and so was his soul. The hand of his father city had come closer about him, and for a moment it seemed that he was too weary, or too lazy, to push it away. For a little while he drifted with the warm and perfumed cloud of the hours. Hands turned him around. It was Houseen Abdelkader, the _caid's_ son, the comrade of long ago--Houseen in silk of wine and silver, hyacinths pendent on his cheeks, a light of festival in his eyes. "_Es-selam alekoum, ya Habib habiby_!" It was the salutation in the plural--to Habib, and to the angels that walk, one at either shoulder of every son of God. And as he spoke he threw a new white burnoose over Habib's head, so that it hung down straight and covered him like a bridal veil. "_Alekoum selam, ya Seenou_!" It was the name of boyhood, Seenou, the diminutive, that fell from Habib's lips. And he could not call it back. "Come thou now." He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The light of an outer conflagration was in his eyes. The thin music of lute and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little boys, came around him on three sides, like footlights. And beyond the glare, in the flaming mist, he saw the street Dar-el-Bey massed with men. All their faces were toward him, hot yellow spots in which the black spots of their mouths gaped and vanished. "That the marriage of Habib be blessed! Blessed be the marriage of Habib!" The riot of sound began to take form. It began to emerge in a measure, a _boom-boom-boom_ of tambours and big goatskin drums. A bamboo fife struck into a high, quavering note. The singing club of Sidibou-Sa d joined voice.