This Was A Wedding Of Great _Eclat_; All The Native Jewish Aristocracy
Of Mogador Being Invited To It.
The festivities, beginning at noon, I
first entered the apartment where the bride was sitting in state.
She
was elevated on a radiant throne of gold and crimson cushions amidst a
group of women, her hired flatterers, who kept singing and bawling out
her praises. "As beautiful as the moon is Rachel!" said one. "Fairer
than the jessamine!" exclaimed another. "Sweeter than honey in the
honey-comb!" ejaculated a third. Her eyes were shut, it being deemed
immodest to look on the company, and the features of her face motionless
as death, which made her look like a painted corpse.
To describe the dresses of the bride would be tedious, as she was
carried away every hour and redressed, going through and exhibiting to
public view, with the greatest patience, the whole of her bridal
wardrobe. Her face was artistically painted; cheeks vermillion; lips
browned, with an odoriferous composition; eye-lashes blackened with
antimony; and on the forehead and tips of the chin little blue stars.
The palms of the hands and nails were stained with henna, or brown-red,
and her feet were naked, with the toe-nails and soles henna-stained. She
was very young, perhaps not more than thirteen, and hugely corpulent,
having been fed on paste and oil these last six months for the occasion.
The bridegroom, on the contrary, was a man of three times her age, tall,
lank and bony, very thin, and of sinister aspect. The woman was a little
lump of fat and flesh, apparently without intelligence, whilst the man
was a Barbary type of Dickens' Fagan.
The ladies had now arranged themselves in tiers, one above the other,
and most gorgeous was the sight. Most of them wore tiaras, all flaming
with gems and jewels. They were literally covered from head to foot with
gold and precious stones. As each lady has but ten fingers, it was
necessary to tie some scores of rings on their hair. The beauty of the
female form, in these women, was quite destroyed by this excessive
quantity of jewellery. These jewels were chiefly pearls, brilliants,
rubies and emeralds.
They are amassed and descend as heir-looms in families, from mother to
daughter. Some of the jewels being very ancient, they constitute the
riches of many families. In reverses of fortune, they are pledged, or
turned into money to relieve immediate necessity. The upper tiers of
ladies were the youngest, and least adorned, and consequently the
prettiest. The ancient dowagers sat below as so many queens enthroned,
challenging scrutiny and admiration. They were mostly of enormous
corpulency, spreading out their naked feet and trousered legs of an
enormous expanse.
Several dowagers seemed scarcely to be able to breathe from heat, and
the plethora of their own well-fed and pampered flesh. We had now music,
and several attempts were made to get up the indecent Moorish dance,
which, however, was forbidden as too vulgar for such fashionable Jews,
and honoured by the presence of Europeans.
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