At Tclemcen, we found ourselves in a second and hardly less beautiful Granada —a Granada moreover peopled with those who had made it what it was, a Granada not wholly dead, but teeming with happy, picturesque Eastern life. The climate is delicious, and the whole atmosphere of the place so gracious and sweet to live in, that one is never ready to come away. We made up our minds to stay a week or ten days in this Capua of Capuas, whose climate, scenery, and every element around us, gave wings to the hours. We never knew how the time went; we only know that, like Faust, we said to the hour, “Stay, for thou art fair,” and that it escaped us like a vision. For those who wish to know what Tclemcen, the “Queen of Marreb” (in Morocco), really is, and was, I refer them to the beautiful and careful papers of M. Brosselard in the Revue Africaine. If I were to say half what I want to say about Tclemcen, this little book would swell into a big one; I will, therefore, do my utmost not to be enthusiastic, since enthusiasm leads me into the rash use of so many words.

The Arabs, who are enthusiastic about great things and small, have described Tclemcen in language as brilliant as a bed of tulips. Listen, for instance, to Abd-el-Kader, who made Tclemcen his capital after the treaty of Tafna in 1837: “At sight of me,” says the great poet, “Tclemcen gave me her hand to kiss; I love her as the child loves the bosom of his mother. I raised the veil which covered her face, and my heart palpitated with joy; her cheeks glowed like flames. Tclemcen has had many masters, but she has showed indifference to all, turning from them with drooping eyelids ; only upon me has she smiled, rendering me the happiest sultan in the world ; she said to me, ‘Give me a kiss, my beloved; shut my lips with thy lips, for I am thine.’”