The thermometer, in a room where the sun never shines, stands nearly at temperate. During twenty days, we have only had two days of bad weather: it is hot in the sun, and cold at night. The days and nights are of resplendent beauty, with almost always a cloudless sky towards evening. The landscape up the river has a delicacy of colouring as peculiar as beautiful. At night the moon is so brilliant, that stars only of the third magnitude are visible. Walking on the top of the house, for here one leads a cat-like life--always on the roof--it is like a mixture of summer and winter. The houses around seem in their whiteness as if under a load of snow; above, there is a summer sky, and around, verdant hills and fields. I gathered in a garden a branch of a pear-tree in full blossom, though the rest of the tree was quite dead; and flocks of swallows were disporting in the air, making, by our proverb, a summer of December. Yet, during this time, there have been disasters upon the coast: the schooner with which we were in company has been entirely lost at Dar-el-Baída.[236] A French steam-vessel of war has also been lost, and eighty men have perished: this is the second. The representative of Muley Idris has been here several times: the last time he came alone, and said his servants and baggage were waiting for him at Salee, where he was going to join them, but that he had come first to bid me “good-bye.” I offered him a trifling present--a microscope; he said he could neither eat it nor wear it, and rejected it with disdain. I said I had nothing less unworthy of his acceptance; on which he said, “Then, give me money.” I was aware that saints cannot ask for coin. He next cast his eyes round the room, and said, “I will take away with me that loaf of sugar.” I intimated to him that he should do nothing of the sort: he instantly dropped the saint and the madman, and we parted in the civilest manner.