The motley crew of Gafsa have become his favourites ever since his arrival
in the country two weeks ago, and he has a theory that it is a mistake to
endeavour to learn their language--it only leads you astray, it spoils the
"direct impression."
He is a well-known French painter, whom some eye trouble has forced--only
temporarily, let us hope--to abandon the brush. Despite his patriarchal
beard, he is an impenitent romanticist of contagious youthfulness; the
entire universe lies so harmoniously disposed and in such roseate tints
before his mental vision, that no one save Madame M----, a wise lady of
the formal-yet-opulent type, whom Maupassant would have classed as "encore
desirable," is able to drag him to earth again, with a few words of
wholesome cynicism.
Just for the fun of the thing, and to while away his hours of enforced
idleness, he is collecting facts for a book to be entitled "Customs of the
Arabs," as exemplified by the life of Gafsa. The idea came to him quite
suddenly, after reading some descriptions which he considered sadly
misleading. Customs of the Arabs! To tease him, I quote the authority of
Bordereau, who says that there are practically no Arabs in Gafsa; that the
customs of this town are one thing and those of the Arabs another, unless
he applies the word Arab to all the Mohammedan races of these parts.
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