given to him by his visitors, carried them home, and
lived during the following week on the proceeds.
He was absent when we reached his cell, but a
small boy who was passing by volunteered to search
for him.
The boy soon returned, bringing with him the
reigning marabout, a greasy-looking negro, beaming
with delight at the prospect of gaining a profitable
client.
As soon as he arrived he went straight to the
point in the most businesslike manner. What was
I going to pay him for opening the door ? After a
prolonged haggle the price was fixed at fifty centimes.
The door happened to be secured by one of those
ponderous wooden locks which form the ordinary
fastening fitted to house doors in the Saharan oases.
It was operated through a keyhole in the wall placed
below the opening into the cell, and about a foot or
so from the edge of the door. The key was an
enormous wooden concern, about the size of a policeman
s truncheon, studded at one end with a number
of little wooden pegs to correspond with the wards
of the lock. When in use these keys are passed
along in the thickness of the wall into the lock
through the edge of the door.
The manipulation of this contrivance was evidently
an operation of considerable difficulty, for
it took two or three minutes and much unsaintly
language on the part of the marabout to undo the
door.
The grave of the departed saint, a small whitewashed
earthen platform about twelve inches high,
covered by the burnous of the deceased marabout,
occupied quite half the den; with the exception of
this the place was quite bare.
The reigning marabout was clearly bent on
business, for as soon as he had shown me the interior
of this mausoleum, he untied a comer of his haik,
which he had knotted over some small object, and
produced a pinch of tangled, greasy hair, which he
asserted to have been cut from the beard of his
defunct parent. He informed me that it was a sure
safeguard against fever, and offered it to me for five
francs.
One glance at that lock of hair was sufficient to
dispel any doubts which I had as to the truth of the
story that its original owner in his pursuit of
holiness had spent his life in the cell by which I
stood. I was almost prepared to swear that he had
carried his piety to still further extremes, and, in
accordance with a custom sometimes adopted by
Moslem saints, had registered a vow never to wash
himself during the whole of that time. That pinch
of hair was a most undesirable possession. I concluded
that of the two evils I should prefer to have
the fever and declined to purchase it at all. The
marabout immediately dropped his price, and finally
came down to a franc and a half, but since I remained
obdurate, he shrugged his shoulders at my folly in
throwing away such a unique opportunity of insuring
my life, and tied the hair carefully up again
in a comer of his haik.
He then produced a knife and offered for a
‘ consideration ’ to cut me off a small portion of