The immense part played by wives in the life of the Mussulmans is shown by the following fact. Tell an Arab that he is a coward, he will submit to the insult—if he is a coward, it is the will of Allah that it should be so. Call him a thief, he will smile; for in his eyes a theft is sometimes a meritorious act. But address him as _tahan_—a word which the language of Molière could alone translate with concise forcibleness—and you will kindle in his breast a fury that blood only can extinguish. The only man whom an Arab will never forgive is one who can with truth cast in his teeth that ill-omened epithet. After marriage the noble of the desert enters upon a new life, and upon a sphere of individual action. He is now emancipated, though not in an absolute fashion unless he is the head of the tent, and master of his own goods and chattels, or if his father is still alive. However, even under these circumstances, he henceforth counts among his tribe as a man of action and of counsel, and by accumulated experience he will put the finishing touch to his training as a great lord, thus far sketched out by the habit of seeing good examples and hearing good advice. Already he has his own clients, his own horses, his own greyhounds, his own falcons, and all the equipments for war and the chace. His clients are young men of his own age, the courtiers of his future eminence. His horses have been chosen from among those that bring good fortune, and of the best authenticated descent. His greyhounds have been fed on dates crushed in milk, and on the kouskoussou of his own meals. They have been broken in by himself; and, while the vulgar dogs of the tribe bark all night at the hyænas and jackals, they lie couched at his feet, beneath the tent, and even upon his very bed. His falcons have been reared under his own eyes by his own falconer, and he himself has taken care to accustom them to his cry on throwing them off and on calling them back. Among his hunting and warlike equipments there are guns from Tunis, or Algiers, damascened and mounted in silver, the stocks incrusted with coral or with mother of pearl—sabres from Fez with scabbards of chased silver—and saddles embroidered in gold and silk on a groundwork of velvet or morocco leather. To complete his accoutrements, I may mention the sabretache ornamented with panther's skin, plated spurs incrusted with coral, the _medol_, or high-crowned broad-brimmed straw hat, with a plume of ostrich feathers, and the _malhazema_, or cartridge-box of morocco leather pinked with silk, gold, and silver.