Hairdressing was not an unimportant part of her toilette. The black hair, befitting her complexion, was allowed to fall down in braids upon the shoulders, but in front there was a fringe. Strings of coral beads were often intertwined with the side locks; and the ornaments of the hair, often costly pearls, were allowed to hang down, giving a delicate tinkle as the woman moved her head. There were some little superstitions about the hair. It was thought that a direful curse fell upon those who joined another's hair to their own. To send a person a bit of hair, or even, by metonymy, the silken string which bound it, was a token of submission. Jewelry was used by the Moorish women in great profusion. They are still passionately fond of ornaments. Even the poorest are well supplied, and the shapely brown arms of the little girls are encircled at the wrist and above the elbow with bands of brass or copper. As the women walk they "make a tinkling with their feet, because of all the rings and anklets and bangles which they wear with so much delight." This jewelry is the woman's personal property, and in case her husband should see fit to divorce her, it still remains her own. One of the most important parts of a Moorish lady's daily life was the bath, a pastime which was both pleasurable and imperative, especially in the homes of the wealthier classes. Coppée, in his _Conquest of Spain_, has thus described the bathing equipment of a Moorish home: "Passing from the centre of a luxurious court through a double archway into another _patio_, similar in proportions and surroundings, and usually lying at right angles to the first, in the centre is a great _estangue_, or oblong basin, seventy-five feet long by thirty in width, and six feet in depth in its deepest part, supplied with limpid waters, raised to a pleasant temperature by heated metallic pipes. Here the indolent, the warm, the weary, may bathe in luxurious languor. Here the women disport themselves, while the entrances are guarded by eunuchs against intrusion. The contented bather may then leave the court by a postern in the gallery, which opens into a beautiful garden, with mazy walks and blooming parterres, redolent with roses and violets. Water is everywhere; one garden house is ingeniously walled in with fountain columns, meant to bid defiance to the fiercest heats and droughts of summer." From these ample and often luxurious arrangements, it might be surmised that by the Moor water was regarded not as a luxury, but as an absolute necessity to a happy life. All classes shared more or less in the habits of cleanliness; for it is said that many of the poor would have spent "their last _dirhem_ for soap, preferring rather to be dinnerless than dirty," while the Moors of the higher order were so scrupulously cleanly that they are said to have spent a very large part of their lives in the bath.