Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
Ben-Abid belonged to the _Tribu des blancs_, and was the singer attached to the café of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted up his voice in the song “Lalia”:
“Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies trembling-- O Lalia! O Lalia! The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest silver-- And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of what will come. O Lalia! O Lalia!”
The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep refrain of “Wur-ra-Wurra!” and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
“Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her,” he murmured. “Ben Ali Tidjani’s blessing could never rest on an Ouled Naïl, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha’s bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who patrol the dunes.”
And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument, while Kouïdah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had spoken.
Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were found many to believe Ben-Abid’s words. She stood before her room upon the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted, vexed her to the soul.
“Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and repeat what he has said!” she cried. “Let him come out from his lair in the café of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit in his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be his------”