Eventually the parade eased off, but then Abd el Kader, thinking the opinion even of fools desirable, felt it upon him to assert his virtue. They were shouting to Ali ibn el Hussein “God give victory to our Sherif” and were reining back on their haunches beside me with “Welcome, Aurans, harbinger of action.” So he climbed up his mare, into her high Moorish saddle, and with his seven Algerian servants behind him in stiff file, began to prance delicately in slow curves, crying out “Houp, Houp,” in his throaty voice, and firing a pistol unsteadily in the air.