Tancred - Benjamin Disraeli (little readers txt) 📗

conquered the world to place the Laws of Sinai on the throne of the Capitol, and a Galilean Arab advanced and traced on the front of the rude conquerors of the Caesars the subduing symbol of the last development of Arabian principles.

'Yet again, and Europe is in the throes of a great birth. The multitudes again are brooding; but they are not now in the forest; they are in the cities and in the fertile plains. Since the first sun of this century rose, the intellectual colony of Arabia, once called Christendom, has been in a state of partial and blind revolt. Discontented, they attributed their suffering to the principles to which they owed all their happiness, and in receding from which they had become proportionately miserable. They have hankered after other gods than the God of Sinai and of Calvary, and they have achieved only desolation. Now they despair. But the eternal principles that controlled barbarian vigour can alone cope with morbid civilisation. The equality of man can only be accomplished by the sovereignty of God. The longing for fraternity can never be satisfied but under the sway of a common father. The relations between Jehovah and his creatures can be neither too numerous nor too near. In the increased distance between God and man have grown up all those developments that have made life mournful. Cease, then, to seek in a vain philosophy the solution of the social problem that perplexes you. Announce the sublime and solacing doctrine of theocratic equality. Fear not, faint not, falter not. Obey the impulse of thine own spirit, and find a ready instrument in every human being.'

A sound, as of thunder, roused Tancred from his trance. He looked around and above. There rose the mountains sharp and black in the clear purple air; there shone, with undimmed lustre, the Arabian stars; but the voice of the angel still lingered in his ear. He descended the mountain: at its base, near the convent, were his slumbering guards, some steeds, and crouching camels.


CHAPTER XXXVII.


Fakredeen is Curious


THE beautiful daughter of Besso, pensive and abstracted, played with her beads in the pavilion of her grandfather. Two of her maidens, who had attended her, in a corner of this inner compartment, accompanied the wild murmur of their voices on a stringed instrument, which might in the old days have been a psaltery. They sang the loves of Antar and of Ibla, of Leila and of Mejnoun; the romance of the desert, tales of passion and of plunder, of the rescue of women and the capture of camels, of heroes with a lion heart, and heroines brighter and softer than the moon.

The beautiful daughter of Besso, pensive and abstracted, played with her beads in the pavilion of her grandfather. Why is the beautiful daughter of Besso pensive and abstracted? What thoughts are flitting over her mind, silent and soft, like the shadows of birds over the sunshiny earth?

Something that was neither silent nor soft disturbed the lady from her reverie; the voice of the great Sheikh, in a tone of altitude and harshness, with him most usual. He was in an adjacent apartment, vowing that he would sooner eat the mother of some third person, who was attempting to influence him, than adopt the suggestion offered. Then there were softer and more persuasive tones from his companion, but evidently ineffectual. Then the voices of both rose together in emulous clamour--one roaring like a bull, the other shrieking like some wild bird; one full of menace, and the other taunting and impertinent. All this was followed by a dead silence, which continuing, Eva assumed that the Sheikh and his companion had quitted his tent. While her mind was recurring to those thoughts which occupied them previously to this outbreak, the voice of Fakredeen was heard outside her tent, saying, 'Rose of Sharon, let me come into the harem;' and, scarcely waiting for permission, the young Emir, flushed and excited, entered, and almost breathless threw himself on the divan.

'Who says I am a coward?' he exclaimed, with a glance of devilish mockery. 'I may run away sometimes, but what of that? I have got moral courage, the only thing worth having since the invention of gunpowder. The beast is not killed, but I have looked into the den; 'tis something. Courage, my fragrant Rose, have faith in me at last. I may make an imbroglio sometimes, but, for getting out of a scrape, I would back myself against any picaroon in the Levant; and that is saying a good deal.'

'Another imbroglio?'

'Oh, no! the same; part of the great blunder. You must have heard us raging like a thousand Afrites. I never knew the great Sheikh so wild.'

'And why?'

'He should take a lesson from Mehemet Ali,' continued the Emir. 'Giving up Syria, after the conquest, was a much greater sacrifice than giving up plunder which he has not yet touched. And the great Pasha did it as quietly as if he were marching into Stamboul instead, which he might have done if he had been an Arab instead of a Turk. Everything comes from Arabia, my dear Eva, at least everything that is worth anything. We two ought to thank our stars every day that we were born Arabs.'

'And the great Sheikh still harps upon this ransom?' inquired Eva.

'He does, and most unreasonably. For, after all, what do we ask him to give up? a bagatelle.'

'Hardly that,' said Eva; 'two millions of piastres can scarcely be called a bagatelle.'

'It is not two millions of piastres,' said Fakre-deen; 'there is your fallacy, 'tis the same as your grandfather's. In the first place, he would have taken one million; then half belonged to me, which reduces his share to five hundred thousand; then I meant to have borrowed his share of him.'

'Borrowed his share!' said Eva.

'Of course I should have allowed him interest, good interest. What could the great Sheikh want five hundred thousand piastres for? He has camels enough; he has so many horses that he wants to change some with me for arms at this moment. Is he to dig a hole in the sand by a well-side to put his treasure in, like the treasure of Solomon; or to sew up his bills of exchange in his turban? The thing is ridiculous, I never contemplated, for a moment, that the great Sheikh should take any hard piastres out of circulation, to lock them up in the wilderness. It might disturb the currency of all Syria, upset the exchanges, and very much injure your family, Eva, of whose interests I am never unmindful. I meant the great Sheikh to invest his capital; he might have made a good thing of it. I could have afforded to pay him thirty per cent, for his share, and made as much by the transaction myself; for you see, as I am paying sixty per cent, at Beiroot, Tripoli, Latakia, and every accursed town of the coast at this moment. The thing is clear; and I wish you would only get your father to view it in the same light, and we might do immense things! Think of this, my Rose of Sharon, dear, dear Eva, think of this; your father might make his fortune and mine too, if he would only lend me money at thirty per cent.'

'You frighten me always, Fakredeen, by these allusions to your affairs. Can it be possible that they are so very bad!'

'Good, Eva, you mean good. I should be incapable of anything, if it were not for my debts. I am naturally so indolent, that if I did not remember in the morning that I was ruined, I should never be able to distinguish myself.'

'You never will distinguish yourself,' said Eva; 'you never can, with these dreadful embarrassments.'

'Shall I not?' said Fakredeen, triumphantly. 'What are my debts to my resources? That is the point. You cannot judge of a man by only knowing what his debts are; you must be acquainted with his resources.'

'But your estates are mortgaged, your crops sold, at least you tell me so,' said Eva, mournfully.

'Estates! crops! A man may have an idea worth twenty estates, a principle of action that will bring him in a greater harvest than all Lebanon.'

'A principle of action is indeed precious,' said Eva; 'but although you certainly have ideas, and very ingenious ones, a principle of action is exactly the thing which I have always thought you wanted.'

'Well, I have got it at last,' said Fakredeen; 'everything comes if a man will only wait.'

'And what is your principle of action?'

'Faith.'

'In yourself? Surely in that respect you have not hitherto been sceptical?'

'No; in Mount Sinai.'

'In Mount Sinai!'

'You may well be astonished; but so it is. The English prince has been to Mount Sinai, and he has seen an angel. What passed between them I do not yet know; but one thing is certain, he is quite changed by the interview. He is all for action: so far as I can form an opinion in the present crude state of affairs, it is not at all impossible that he may put himself at the head of the Asian movement. If you have faith, there is nothing you may not do. One thing is quite settled, that he will not at present return to Jerusalem, but, for change of air and other reasons, make a visit with me to Canobia.'

'He seems to have great purpose in him,' said Eva, with an air of some constraint.

'By-the-bye,' said Fakredeen, 'how came you, Eva, never to tell me that you were acquainted with him?'

'Acquainted with him?' said Eva.

'Yes; he recognised you immediately when he recovered himself, and he has admitted to me since that he has seen you before, though I could not get much out of him about it. He will talk for ever about Arabia, faith, war, and angels; but, if you touch on anything personal, I observe he is always very shy. He has not my fatal frankness. Did you know him at Jerusalem?'

'I met him by hazard for a moment at Bethany. I neither asked then, nor did he impart to me, his name. How then could I tell you we were acquainted? or be aware that the stranger of my casual interview was this young Englishman whom you have made a captive?'

'Hush!' said Fakredeen, with an air of real or affected alarm. 'He is going to be my guest at my principal castle. What do you mean by captive? You mean whom I have saved from captivity, or am about to save?

'Well, that would appear to be the real question to which you ought to address yourself at this moment,' said Eva. 'Were I you, I should postpone the great Asian movement until you had disembarrassed yourself from your present position, rather an equivocal one both for a patriot and a friend.'

'Oh! I'll manage the great Sheikh,' said Fakredeen, carelessly. 'There is too much plunder in the future for Amalek to quarrel with me. When he scents the possibility of the Bedouin cavalry being poured into Syria and Asia Minor, we shall find him more manageable. The only thing now is to heal the present disappointment by extenuating circumstances. If I could screw up a few thousand piastres for backsheesh,' and he looked Eva in the face, 'or could put anything in his way! What do you think, Eva?'

Eva shook her head.

'What an obstinate Jew dog he is!' said Fakre-deen. 'His rapacity