The Exotic
Costumes Of The Albanian Girls In Their Green And Gold Wove Themselves
Into Dreams And Called Up Colours Seen In Northern Africa During Still
Wilder Festivals - Negro Festivals Such As Fro-Mentin Loved To Depict.
In
spectral dance there flitted before my vision nightmarish throngs of
dusky women bedizened in that same green and
Gold; Arabs I saw, riding
tumultuously hither and thither with burnous flying in the wind; beggars
crawling about the hot sand and howling for alms; ribbons and flags
flying - a blaze of sunshine overhead, and on earth a seething orgy of
colour and sound; methought I heard the guttural yells of the
fruit-vendors, musketry firing, braying of asses, the demoniacal groans
of the camels - -
Was it really a camel? No. It was something infinitely worse, and within
a few feet of my ears. I sprang out of bed. There, at the very window,
stood a youth extracting unearthly noises out of the Basilicata bagpipe.
To be sure! I remembered expressing an interest in this rare instrument
to one of my hosts who, with subtle delicacy, must have ordered the boy
to give me a taste of his quality - to perform a matutinal serenade, for
my especial benefit. How thoughtful these people are. It was not quite 4
a.m. With some regret, I said farewell to sleep and stumbled out of
doors, where my friends of yesterday evening were already up and doing.
The eating, the dancing, the bagpipes - they were all in violent
activity, under the sober and passionless eye of morning.
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