WE OUGHT to have met at Jerusalem,’ said Tancred to Besso, on whose right hand he was seated, ‘but I am happy to thank you for all your kindness, even at Damascus.’ ‘My daughter tells me you are not uninterested in our people, which is the reason I ventured to ask you here.’

‘I cannot comprehend how a Christian can be uninterested in a people who have handed down to him immortal truths.’

‘All the world is not as sensible of the obligation as yourself, noble traveller.’

‘But who are the world? Do you mean the inhabitants of Europe, which is a forest not yet cleared; or the inhabitants of Asia, which is a ruin about to tumble?’

‘The railroads will clear the forest,’ said Besso. ‘And what is to become of the ruin?’ asked Tancred.

‘God will not forget His land.’ ‘That is the truth; the government of this globe must be divine, and the impulse can only come from Asia.’

‘If your government only understood the Eastern question!’ said Mr. Consul–General Laurella, pricking up his ears at some half phrase that he had caught, and addressing Tancred across the table. ‘It is more simple than you imagine, and before you return to England to take your seat in your Parliament, I should be very happy to have some conversation with you.

I think I could tell you some things ——’ and he gave a glance of diplomatic mystery. Tancred bowed.

‘For my part,’ said Hillel Besso, shrugging his shoulders, and speaking in an airy tone, ‘it seems to me that your Eastern question is a great imbroglio that only exists in the cabinets of diplomatists. Why should there be any Eastern question? All is very well as it is. At least we might be worse: I think we might be worse.’

‘I am so happy to find myself once more among you,’ whispered Fakredeen to his neighbour, Madame Mourad Farhi. ‘This is my real home.’

‘All here must be happy and honoured to see you, too, noble Emir.’

‘And the good Signor Mourad: I am afraid I am not a favourite of his?’ pursued Fakredeen, meditating a loan.

‘I never heard my husband speak of you, noble Emir, but with the greatest consideration.’

‘There is no man I respect so much,’ said Fakredeen; ‘no one in whom I have such a thorough confidence. Excepting our dear host, who is really my father, there is no one on whose judgment I would so implicitly rely. Tell him all that, my dear Madame Mourad, for I wish him to respect me.’

‘I admire his hair so much,’ whispered Thérèse Laurella, in an audible voice to her sister, across the broad form of the ever-smiling Madame Picholoroni. ’Tis such a relief after our dreadful turbans.’

‘And his costume, so becoming! I wonder how any civilised being can wear the sort of things we see about us. ’Tis really altogether like a wardrobe of the Comédie.’

‘Well, Sophonisbe,’ said the sensible Moses Laurella, ‘I admire the Franks very much; they have many qualities which I could wish our Levantines shared; but I confess that I do not think that their strong point is their costume.’

‘Oh, my dear uncle!’ said Thérèse; ‘look at that beautiful white cravat. What have we like it? So simple, so distinguished! Such good taste! And then the boots. Think of our dreadful slippers! powdered with pearls and all sorts of trash of that kind, by the side of that lovely French polish.’

‘He must be terribly ennuyé here,’ said Thérèse to Sophonisbe, with a look of the initiated.

‘Indeed, I should think so: no balls, not an opera; I quite pity him. What could have induced him to come here?’

‘I should think he must be attached to some one,’ said Thérèse: ‘he looks unhappy.’

‘There is not a person near him with whom he can have an idea in common.’

‘Except Mr. Hillel Besso,’ said Thérèse. ‘He appears to be quite enlightened. I spoke to him a little before dinner. He has been a winter at Pera, and went to all the balls.’

‘Lord Palmerston understood the Eastern question to a certain degree,’ said Mr. Consul–General Laurella; ‘but, had I been in the service of the Queen of England, I could have told him some things;’ and he mysteriously paused.

‘I cannot endure this eternal chatter about Palmerston,’ said the Emir, rather pettishly. ‘Are there no other statesmen in the world besides Palmerston? And what should he know about the Eastern question, who never was in the East?’

‘Ah, noble Emir, these are questions of the high diplomacy. They cannot be treated unless by the cabinets which have traditions.’

‘I could settle the Eastern question in a month, if I were disposed,’ said Fakredeen.

Mr. Consul–General Laurella smiled superciliously, and then said, ‘But the question is, what is the Eastern question?’

‘For my part,’ said Hillel Besso, in a most epigrammatic manner, ‘I do not see the use of settling anything.’

‘The Eastern question is, who shall govern the Mediterranean?’ said the Emir. ‘There are only two powers who can do it: Egypt and Syria. As for the English, the Russians, the Franks, your friends the Austrians, they are strangers. They come, and they will go; but Syria and Egypt will always remain.’

‘Egypt has tried, and failed.’

‘Then let Syria try, and succeed.’

‘Do you visit Egypt before you return from the East, noble sir?’ asked Besso, of Tancred.

‘I have not thought of my return; but I should not be sorry to visit Egypt. It is a country that rather perplexes us in Europe. It has undergone great changes.’

Besso shook his head, and slightly smiled.

‘Egypt,’ said he, ‘never changes. ’Tis the same land as in the days of the Pharaohs: governed on their principles of political economy, with a Hebrew for prime minister.’

‘A Hebrew for prime minister!’

‘Even so: Artim Bey, the present prime minister of Egypt, formerly the Pasha’s envoy at Paris, and by far the best political head in the Levant, is not only the successor but the descendant of Joseph.’

‘He must be added then to your friend M. de Sidonia’s list of living Hebrew statesmen,’ said Tancred.

‘We have our share of the government of the world,’ said Besso.

‘It seems to me that you govern every land except your own.’

‘That might have been done in ‘39,’ said Besso musingly; ‘but why speak of a subject which can little interest you?’

‘Can little interest me!’ exclaimed Tancred. ‘What other subject should interest me? More than six centuries ago, the government of that land interested my ancestor, and he came here to achieve it.’

The stars were shining before they quitted the Arabian tabernacle of Besso. The air was just as soft as a sweet summer English noon, and quite as still. The pavilions of the terrace and the surrounding bowers were illuminated by the varying tints of a thousand lamps. Bright carpets and rich cushions were thrown about for those who cared to recline; the brothers Farhi, for example, and indeed most of the men, smoking inestimable nargilehs. The Consul–General Laurella begged permission to present Lord Montacute to his daughters Thérèse and Sophonisbe, who, resolved to show to him that Damascus was not altogether so barbarous as he deemed it, began talking of new dances ............