“May you burst, O Joanna,” said the Mulatto, “and may Johár also burst; I mean, may you both live many years, and know neither pain nor sorrow. I will take the gin-bitters, O Joanna, because they are stronger than the _makhiah_, which always appears to me like water; and I like not water, though I carry it. Many thanks to you, Joanna; here is health to you, Joanna, and to this good company.” She had handed him a large tumbler filled to the brim; he put it to his nostrils, snuffed in the flavour, and then, applying it to his mouth, removed it not whilst one drop of the fluid remained. His features gradually relaxed from their former angry expression, and looking particularly amiable at Joanna, he at last said— “I hope that within a little time, O Joanna, you will be persuaded that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and that I am sprung from the blood of the Moors of Garnata, as then you will no longer refuse to take me for a husband, you and your maid Johár, and to become Moors. What a glory to you, after having been married to a _Genoui_, and given birth to _Genouillos_, to receive for husband a Moor like me, and to bear him children of the blood of Garnata! What a glory, too, for Johár!—how much better than to marry a vile Jew, even like Hayim Ben Attar, or your cook Sabia, both of whom I could strangle with two fingers, for am I not Hammin Widdir, _Moro de Garnata_, _el hombre mas valido de Tanger_?” He then shouldered his barrel and departed. “Is that Mulatto really what he pretends to be?” said I to Joanna; “is he a descendant of the Moors of Granada?” “He always talks about the Moors of Granada, when he is mad with _majoon_ or _aguardiente_,” interrupted, in bad French, the old man whom I have before described, and in the same croaking voice which I had heard chanting in the morning. “Nevertheless it may be true, and if he had not heard something of the kind from his parents, he would never have imagined such a thing, for he is too stupid. As I said before, it is by no means impossible: many of the families of Granada settled down here when their town was taken by the Christians, but the greater part went to Tunis. When I was there, I lodged in the house of a Moor who called himself Zegri, {378} and was always talking of Granada and the things which his forefathers had done there. He would moreover sit for hours singing romances of which I understood not one word, praised be the Mother of God, but which he said all related to his family: there were hundreds of that name in Tunis, therefore why should not this Hammin, this drunken water-carrier, be a Moor of Granada also? He is ugly enough to be emperor of all the Moors. Oh, the accursed _canaille_! I have lived amongst them for my sins these eight years, at Oran and here. _Monsieur_, do you not consider it to be a hard case for an old man like myself, who am a Christian, to live amongst a race who know not God, nor Christ, nor anything holy?”