The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter, but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white walls and minarets.Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as in an Eastern city.Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of quarried chalk.Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone.Sometimes a clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place, and again everything was still.Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
"O Tetuan," thought the Mahdi, "how soon will your streets be uprooted and your sanctuaries destroyed!"The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the dawn.He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky.Not one of them seemed to be awake.Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the circles where they had last fed.Only their mules and asses, all hobbled and still saddled, were up and feeding.
The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa.So poor a place he had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land.