Chapter XXII (4)

Whilst this most dignified of dragomans was house-hunting, M. de Nerval passed his time as well as he could at the despised French hotel, which he found very comfortable, and which is built round a square white-washed court, covered with a light trellis-work, overgrown with vines. In an upper gallery of this court, a French artist, talented and amiable, but very deaf, had established his easel and his daguerreotype, and there he studied and sketched the forms of the principal Egyptian races. He had no difficulty in obtaining models amongst the lower classes of the Cairo women, most of whom, however, were exceedingly punctilious in veiling their features, however much of their persons they might be induced to expose to the artist’s gaze. The face is the last refuge of Oriental modesty. Besides the resource of the painter’s society, M. de Nerval found a very fair _table d’hôte_ at the hôtel Domergue, several Anglo-Indians to laugh at, a piano, and a billiard-table. He began to think he might almost as well have remained at Marseilles. Impatient to commence a more Oriental mode of life, he allowed Abdallah to conduct him to various houses that were to let. House-rent is almost nominal in Cairo. He found that he might have a palace for about three pounds a-year. Abdallah showed him several such—stately mansions many stories high, with marble-paved halls and cooling fountains, with galleries and staircases as in Genoese and Venetian palaces, with courts surrounded by columns, and gardens shaded by rare trees. An army of slaves and servants was all that was needed to make them fitting residences for a prince. The engagement of such a retinue not entering into M. de Nerval’s calculations, he was glad to take a much smaller house, with glazed windows, (there was not a pane of glass in any of the palaces,) which had recently been occupied by an Englishman. Hiring a house in Cairo is rather a complicated operation. An act was drawn up in Arabic, and paid for; presents were made to the Sheik of the quarter, to the lawyer, and to the chief of the nearest guard-house; the scribes and servants had also to be fee’d. When M. de Nerval had complied with all these forms, the Sheik handed him the key. This was a piece of wood “like a baker’s tally, at one end of which five or six nails were driven in as if at random; but there was no random in the matter: this strange key is introduced into a hole in the door, the nails correspond with little holes, invisible from without, pass through them, and raise a wooden bolt.” In possession of the key, the next thing to be done was to furnish the house. Little money and less time sufficed to accomplish this. Some cotton and cloth were bought at a bazaar, and converted, in a few hours, into divan cushions, which served as mattresses at night. A basket-maker put together a sort of bedframe of palm twigs; a little round table, some cups and pipes—and the house was furnished and fit to receive the best company in Cairo. M. de Nerval’s first visitor was an officious Jew, a breeder of silk-worms, who established himself on one of the divans, took coffee and a pipe, and undertook to prove that his host had been swindled by Abdallah and the merchant at the bazaar, and had paid twice too much for everything he had bought. The Jew was followed by the Sheik, who came early the next morning and waited in the opposite coffee-house till M. de Nerval was up. He was a venerable old man with a white beard, and was attended by his secretary and negro pipe-bearer. When he was installed upon a divan, and supplied with the inevitable pipe and coffee, he informed M. de Nerval, through the medium of Abdallah, that he had brought him back the money he had paid for the house. It was an intimation that he was not approved of as a tenant. Greatly astonished, the Frenchman asked the reason. “His morality was suspicious,” was the reply; “he had no wife or female slave.” This was quite contrary to the custom of the country. He must supply the deficiency or quit the premises. His neighbours, who were better provided, would be uneasy at the proximity of a bachelor resident. In short, he had the option given him to marry or move. For the latter he had no fancy, when he had just furnished a house that suited him well; he was averse to matrimony, and his European scruples opposed the purchase of a female slave. Doubting the Sheik’s right to compel him to decamp or conjugate, he requested the functionary to take patience for a few days whilst he consulted his friends, to do which he at once sallied forth. We need hardly inform the discerning reader that this dilemma is the peg upon which the ingenious and facetious Frenchman contrives to hang a whole volume. On his way to seek advice from his countryman the painter, he falls in with a Turk, whose acquaintance he had made on board the steamboat, confides his difficulty to him, and the conversation that ensues fills a chapter. Then, whilst rambling about with the deaf artist, he gets into an adventure with two veiled ladies, whom he follows home, and who prove to be Frenchwomen, wife and sister-in-law of a renegade French officer. But the most practical information he obtained on the knotty point of acquiring a harem was from Yusef, the Jew silk-grower, who came daily to take a pipe on his divan and improve himself in the French language. From him he ascertained that there are four ways of contracting marriage at Cairo. The first and least binding is with a Cophtic woman before a Turkish santon; a union that, in fact, amounts exactly to nothing, the contracting parties being both Christians, and the officiating priest Mahometan. Then there is the marriage before a Cophtic priest, which admits of divorce on payment of a small sum in compensation; a third sort is binding so long as the husband remains in the country; whilst the fourth (celebrated both at the Cophtic church and Franciscan convent) gives the wife a right to follow him, and is a _bonâ fide_ and permanent union—too permanent for M. de Nerval’s taste; who, considering the other three modes as merely so many recognised forms of concubinage, ended by purchasing, for twenty-five pounds sterling, a yellow slave of Malay or Javanese origin, with a sun tatooed upon her breast and forehead, and a lance-head upon her chin, and who had a hole through her left nostril, intended to receive a nose-ring. Having made this precious acquisition, he found she had pretensions to be treated as a _cadine_, (lady,) and esteemed it quite below her dignity to attend to domestic matters; and, in short, the unlucky Frenchman’s ill-advised acquiescence in Eastern customs brought upon him a host of troubles and annoyances, of which he makes the most for the benefit of his readers. The whole account of the author’s Egyptian proceedings reads more like a fantastical tale, invented at leisure, than a narrative of actual events; but in a note at the end of his work he protests that all he has written down really occurred. He had reckoned on making a considerable stay at Cairo; but notwithstanding the extraordinary cheapness of that city, he soon found his purse getting very low, as a consequence of the extravagance and caprices of the yellow woman, of his disorderly mode of housekeeping, and of the inexactness and roguery of most of those with whom he had any dealings. So he was obliged to shorten his term of residence, lest he should find himself without sufficient funds to reach Syria, which was his next destination. Having resolved on departure, he offered her liberty to the slave, whose name was Zeynab, if she chose to remain at Cairo. This proposal, instead of being gratefully received, excited the indignation of the _cadine_. What was she to do with her liberty? She requested him to sell her again to Abd-el-Kerim, the wealthy slave-dealer from whom he had bought her. But although he had not scrupled to buy her, he could not make up his mind to take money for human flesh and blood, and began to philosophise on the strange state of a country where slaves would not accept their freedom. Meanwhile Zeynab wept at the prospect of starvation, for she could do nothing to earn her bread, and was too proud to take service. The European, by aping the Turkish manner of life, had got himself into a perfect labyrinth of embarrassments. He had changed his dress and his diet, and had taken the first step towards the formation of a harem; but he would not change his religion, nor could he divest himself of certain civilised ideas, incompatible with the conditions of his new existence. He found all the inconveniences of his ambiguous manner of life, and evidently, although he does not care to confess it, wished he had abstained from his social experiments, and had followed the example of the sober-sided English, whom he laughs at for their constancy to roast-beef, porter, and potatoes, and whom he ludicrously sketches wandering about Cairo on donkeys, with long legs nearly touching the ground, with green veils fastened to their white hats, and blue spectacles protecting their eyes, with India-rubber overcoats, long sticks to keep off suspicious Arabs, and a groom and a dragoman on their right hand and on their left. The die was cast, however; he was too compassionate to leave the gold-coloured incubus to her fate; and the upshot was, that she was allowed to follow him to Syria, causing him, upon the way, almost as many annoyances as she had occasioned him at Cairo. The voyage was accomplished on board of a Levantine vessel, the Santa Barbara, commanded by a Greek named Nicholas. This was a one-masted craft, with a black, collier-like hull, a long yard, and a single triangular sail, manned by Turks, and laden with rice. The deck was encumbered with boxes of poultry—provisions for the voyage. The little den known as the captain’s cabin, for the use of which M. de Nerval had bargained, was infested with enormous red beetles, so that he was glad to resign his claim, and to establish himself in the longboat. This was suspended before the mast, and, with the help of cotton cushions and sail-cloth awning, it was converted into a very tolerable refuge, so long as the weather continued fine. A young Armenian scribe, who composed verses, and was in quest of employment, and to whom M. de Nerval had given a passage in his boat down the Nile, had also embarked in the Santa Barbara, and supplied the place of Abdallah as an interpreter. Captain Nicholas, an easy-going, hospitable, lubberly mariner, who had been half a pirate in the time of the Greek war, invited his passenger to partake of his pillau and Cyprus wine, and confided to him all his affairs. The indolent Greek passed his time in strumming one invariable tune on an old guitar, and in playing at chess with the pilot; his nautical talents were anything but brilliant, and his compass was out of order, so that it was hardly to be wondered at that, on the third day of the voyage, when they should have sighted Syria, Syria was nowhere to be seen. There was little or no wind; now and then a puff of air filled the sail, but soon died away, and the canvass flapped idly against the mast. Captain Nicholas troubled not his head about the matter: he had his chessmen and his guitar; they sufficed to occupy his attention. The Armenian was not quite so tranquil, and that evening he communicated to his French acquaintance the cause of his uneasiness. Although but three days from port, they were running short of water. M. de Nerval could not credit this.

“‘You have no notion of the carelessness of these people,’ said the
Armenian. ‘To obtain fresh water, they must have sent a boat as far as
Damietta, that at the mouth of the Nile being salt; and as the town
was in quarantine, they dreaded the forms—at least, that is the reason
they give; but the fact is, they never thought about it.’

“‘Astonishing!’ said I; ‘and yonder is the captain, singing as if our
situation were the most natural in the world;’ and I went with the
Armenian to question him on the subject.

“Captain Nicholas rose and showed me the water-casks, which were
entirely empty, with the exception of one, which might still contain
some five or six bottles of water; then he resumed his seat upon the
poop, took up his guitar, and resumed his eternal song, lolling back
his head against the bulwarks.

“The next morning I awoke early, and walked forward, thinking it might
be possible to discern the shores of Palestine. But in vain did I
polish the glasses of my telescope; the line of sea at the extreme
horizon was as sharp and unbroken as the curved blade of a Damascus
sabre. It was probable we had hardly changed our place since the
previous evening. I returned towards the stern of the vessel.
Everybody was fast asleep, with the exception of the cabin-boy, who
was copiously washing his hands and face in water which he drew from
our last cask of potable liquid!”

Fortunately a light westerly breeze sprang up in the evening. The next morning, so said Nicholas, the blue peaks of Mount Carmel would be visible in the horizon. Suddenly shouts of horror and consternation were heard. “A fowl overboard!” was the cry. M. de Nerval was disposed to treat this misfortune pretty lightly. Not so the owner, a Turkish sailor, who was in despair, and with whom his messmates warmly sympathised. The fowl floated astern, making signals of distress; the Turk had to be forcibly held, to prevent him jumping overboard; and, to M. de Nerval’s astonishment and disgust, the captain, after a moment’s hesitation, ordered the vessel to be brought to. After two days’ calm, and when running short of water, this seemed a singular way of profiting by a favourable breeze. M. de Nerval hoped to accelerate matters by giving the bereaved sailor a couple of piastres, a sum for which an Arab would at any time risk his life. The man’s countenance brightened, he pocketed the coins, pulled off his clothes, jumped into the sea, swam a prodigious distance, and returned in half-an-hour, so exhausted, that he had to be lifted on board, but bringing back his chicken, which he rubbed and warmed with as much care as if it had been an only child, and which at last he had the satisfaction of seeing hop about the deck. Once more sail was made, and the ship advanced. “The devil take the hen!” quoth the exasperated Nerval, “we have lost an hour. I have plenty of fowls, and would have given him several for that one.” The Armenian explained. It was a religious, or at least a superstitious question. The sailor had been on the point of cutting his fowl’s throat, when it flew away over his left shoulder. According to Turkish belief, had it been drowned, its owner had not three days to live. M. de Nerval began to weary of ship and crew, and his weariness became anger when he discovered that one of the sailors, an elderly Turk who had great influence over the others, as being a _hadji_ or pilgrim returned from Mecca, was endeavouring to persuade the yellow woman that a Christian had no right to own a Mahometan slave of white blood, (she was the colour of saffron.) Captain Nicholas, as a Greek Christian, had little real authority over his Turkish crew, and that little he showed himself indisposed to exercise. Some rather animated scenes ensued, which were near ending in a fight between the Frenchman and the hadji. A sort of sullen hollow truce was brought about, but M. de Nerval’s position was not very agreeable, nor perhaps quite safe, when he suddenly remembered that he had in his pocket-book a letter of recommendation to Méhmed Réchid, pasha of Acre, from a Turkish friend of his who for some time had been member of the divan at Constantinople. He himself had been acquainted with the Pasha during his abode at Paris as member of the Turkish embassy, and, as luck would have it, all this was duly set forth in the letter, which was properly indited in Arabic, and which the Armenian, after placing it on his head in token of respect, read aloud to the captain and crew. It so happened that the ship was now off Acre, where she was compelled to put in for water; and the bastinado which M. de Nerval had threatened to procure for the crew, on their arrival in that port, no longer appeared to them in the light of an empty menace. The hadji and his shipmates drew in their horns, and were all humility; the Greek master apologised for the little vigour he had shown in repressing their insolence; and as to the yellow slave—“since you are the friend of Méhmed Pasha, who shall say she is not lawfully yours; who would dare to contend against the favour of the great?” So spoke Captain Nicholas, a true modern Greek in falseness and servility. And Zeynab, who had been refractory and had called her master a giaour, was sent for a short space to keep company with the beetles in the captain’s cabin.

However delightful may be a cruise in the Levant, on board a well-found vessel and with a competent crew, it is unpleasant, and at times almost perilous, in native craft, and with the deceitful and ignorant Greek and Arab captains. Mr Neale gives a shocking picture of his discomforts in an Arab felucca, on board which he coasted from Gaza to Caipha, and again from Caipha to Sidon. By special stipulation, he and his servant were to be the sole passengers. “_Allah Rassi_ (by my head) it shall be as you desire,” vowed the lying Reis, when entering into his agreement in presence of the quarantine authorities; but when the “only passenger” went on board, he found the little vessel crowded with men, women, and children, and passed a night of extreme discomfort and irritation. Most of his journeys were by land. Starting from Gaza, the southernmost port of Syria, he made excursions to Hebron, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, returned to Gaza, and then went northwards along the coast, branching off inland to visit Antioch, Aleppo, and other places, and concluding with a trip into Asia Minor. Some of the Syrian towns he appears to have visited repeatedly during the eight years he spent in the country, and in most of them he made some stay. To any traveller proposing to visit Syria, his book will serve as a useful itinerary. He had, over M. de Nerval, the advantage of being well acquainted with Arabic. Like him, he has a fling at the eccentricities of English tourists, and exposes the rogueries of dragomans. He gives a ludicrous account of the proceedings of these worthies at Gaza, where he passed some months. The new Lazaretto and quarantine establishment at that place form a vast edifice, situated on a plain, about three hours’ journey from the Egyptian frontier. The construction was completed in the spring of 1850, at great expense to the Turkish government. The apartments allotted to Europeans are airy and wholesome in summer, warm and comfortable in winter; the charges made are very trifling; and the term of detention is but five days, including the day of entry and that of _pratique_: so that, waiving the question of the expediency of quarantine against Egypt, travellers might fairly be expected to submit patiently, and with a good grace, to the brief incarceration within walls thirty feet high. And so they for the most part do. The refractory ones, almost without exception, are natives of the British isles. In 1850, the Nazir, or director of the quarantine, was Achmet Effendi, an affable Turkish gentleman who had been educated in Italy, spoke and wrote Italian fluently, was a good musician, and altogether a civilised and agreeable person, very different from the usual run of pompous pipe-smoking Syrian effendis. The medical officer was Doctor Esperon, from whose plan and under whose directions the Lazaretto had been built. These two gentlemen made heavy complaints of the trouble occasioned by the majority of their English visitors.

“Spanish grandees, Italian nobles, German barons, and Frenchmen, whose
families had pedigrees more antediluvian than Noah, were wont to
submit calmly to the rules and regulations of the establishment, and
quitted it on an intimate footing of friendship with the authorities;
but no sooner was the proximity of a caravan of Englishmen announced
than every one was thrown into a state of excitement, and all the
twenty soldiers, with their truculent lieutenant, were immediately
drawn up in battle array. The two hundred guardians looked hot and
fierce; ferocious-looking camel-drivers were pressed into the service.
The Nazir twirled his huge mustachios; and the doctor, to be prepared
for an emergency, had a table placed in the gateway, on which he made
a diabolical display of surgical instruments. After a great deal of
excitement and impatience, a little cloud of dust proclaimed the
arrival of the dreaded individuals. First came a couple of guardians,
with drawn swords and very hoarse voices, having been wrangling with
the dragoman all the way from the outposts. Then one, or perhaps two,
nondescript animals, in costumes hitherto unheard of, with sinister
faces and mustachios nine inches from point to point. These were the
dragomans, or interpreters, who always accompany ‘milords’ on their
travels, speaking a little English, just sufficient to misunderstand
what you say, and making themselves a little useful at times, in
amends for which sacrifices they are exceedingly skilled in the art of
fleecing or plucking their employers. After these, the milords
themselves heave in sight, generally wearing large felt hats, covered
with calico, the whiteness of which contrasts admirably with their own
highly inflamed countenances. Once opposite the quarantine gates, a
violent argument instantly ensues. The orator on these occasions is
generally the dragoman, for the travellers are too weary and hot to
take any active part. The first concession for which the fiery
interpreter contends is, that they may be permitted to pitch their own
tents in the vicinity of the quarantine, and be allowed to stroll as
far as the beach (accompanied by guardians) for the sake of healthful
recreation. This point is vainly combated by the authorities, who
‘_show cause why_’ such privileges should not be allowed them—viz.,
such as the wind accidentally blowing a bit of straw or a rag against
some passenger, causing the said unhappy individual to be immediately
arrested and incarcerated as impure. Finally, the camels on which the
tents are laden are forcibly seized and dragged into the quarantine,
which act settles this question eternally; but there are others to be
arranged, and these are disputed step by step, and inch by inch. The
first set of guardians who are placed to guard the separate apartments
of the strangers are forthwith kicked out of their rooms. But the
uproar that ensues when the travellers and their servants are
disarmed, and their guns, pistols, and swords taken from them and
lodged in the armoury—this, I was told, beggars all description. The
interpreters on such occasions become maniacs; they lie on the flat of
their backs, and kick and bite like monkeys, until, overcome by
numbers and their injured feelings, they go into fits, and come out of
them again, the very points of their mustachios hanging down in
despair, and then slink about like dogs in a strange street,
‘effendi-ing’ and cringing to every one they come across.”

The riotous proceedings thus humorously described by Mr Neale were often the fault of the dragomans alone, whose employers, ignorant of any other language than English, and completely at their mercy, were unwittingly made accomplices of their turbulent and vexatious manœuvres. The helplessness of Englishmen abroad, when they get off those beaten tracks along which their language is considered the necessary accomplishment of hotel-waiters and railway-clerks, is notorious and laughable, and is not likely to diminish until a good practical knowledge of at least one foreign language is set down as an indispensable part of the most ordinary education. Both in purse and comfort, Englishmen pay dearly for their lingual deficiencies, and for the apparent stiffness and reserve which are their inevitable consequences. Travelling in the course of the year perhaps as much as all the rest of Europe put together, they are the helpless and often unsuspicious victims of guides, interpreters, _valets-de-place_, and innkeepers. It is notorious that in most parts of the Continent there are two tariffs—one for the English, and one for all other foreigners. The practice extends even to Syria. At Beyrout, M. de Nerval, attracted by savoury odours, walked one day into the _trattoria_ of the Signor Battista, then the only Frank hotel-keeper in the place, which he had previously abstained from visiting, from a dread of exorbitant charges. Upon that occasion, however, he thought he would venture to try the _table d’hôte_, which was spread upon a terrace beneath a red and white awning. Upon an adjacent door he read the following inscription: _Qui si paga 60 piastres per giorno_. Sixty piastres, or fifteen francs, for every twenty-four hours’ board and lodging at a Beyrout hotel, seemed to him rather a heavy price. He took his seat, however, and ate his dinner, side by side with an English missionary, who had been on a converting expedition into the mountains, and who triumphantly exhibited to him a book full of the signatures of proselytes, one of the most brilliant of whom, a lad from the vicinity of Bagdad, he had with him in the double capacity of a servant and of a sample of his success. After dinner, on leaving the hotel, “I was surprised to have only ten piastres (two francs and a half) to pay for my meal. Signor Battista took me aside, and reproached me in a friendly manner for not having gone to stay at his hotel. I pointed to the inscription announcing sixty piastres a-day to be the price of admission, which was at the rate of eighteen hundred piastres a-month. ‘_Ah! corpo di me!_’ cried he, ‘that is for the English, who have a great deal of money, and are all heretics; but for the French, and other Romans, it is only five francs.’” “Beyrout,” says Mr Neale, “is a very expensive place to live in, and a very easy one to die in.” It is a most flourishing town, although an unpleasant residence. Mr Neale visited it many times during his stay in Syria, and always found it increasing in wealth, population, and dimensions. In a commercial point of view, it is the capital of Syria; it contains more European inhabitants than any other town, is the residence of the various consuls-general, and the place of adjustment of the oft-recurring disputes between the Druses and Maronites of the Lebanon. The scenery around it is beautiful. M. de Nerval was in raptures with the place. “A landscape all freshness, shade and silence; a view of the Alps taken from the bosom of a Swiss lake. Such,” he says, “is Beyrout.” Mr Neale says little about the surrounding scenery, but dwells at some length upon the creature-comforts of the place, its social resources and mercantile advantages, its hosts of fleas and mosquitoes, and horribly noisy barracks, the two greatest nuisances in the town, in whose very centre, close to the dwellings of some of the most respectable merchants, the latter are situated.

Released from quarantine, M. de Nerval engaged a lodging in the house of a Maronite family, half a league from the town. During his brief residence beneath the shadow of the yellow flag, he had taken it into his head, or rather the blundering Greek Nicholas had made him believe, that an attachment had sprung up between the young Armenian scribe and the yellow slave. With a base affectation of magnanimity, but evidently with secret delight at the prospect of getting rid of the tatooed beauty whom he had so imprudently associated with his fortunes, he declared her emancipated, and told the Armenian to marry her. The poor scribe, whose only possessions were the clothes he stood in, and the copper inkhorn suspended at his girdle, had never dreamed of falling in love—far less of marrying; and as to Zeynab, she was monstrously offended at its being supposed she could bestow a thought upon a mere _raya_, the servant alternately of Turks and Franks. M. de Nerval found he had been misled by the officious Greek, and by his own very imperfect knowledge of the Oriental tongues. The Maronites with whom he went to lodge strongly advised him to sell his encumbrance, and proposed to fetch a Turk who would buy her; but he could not bring himself to do this, and ended by sending her to board with a Marseilles lady who kept a school at Beyrout, and who promised to treat her kindly, and convert her to Christianity. This matter settled, M. de Nerval started for the mountains. A few days previously, a young Emir, or Christian prince of a district of Lebanon, had come to lodge in the same house with himself—had sought his acquaintance, and had asked him to go and pass a few days with him in the interior of the country; an invitation which he eagerly accepted, and which consoled him in some measure for being compelled to abandon a tour in Palestine, marked upon his itinerary.

“For the five purses,” he mournfully exclaims, “expended in the
purchase of this gold-coloured daughter of the Malaccas, I could have
visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Dead Sea and the
Jordan! Like the prophet whom God punished, I pause upon the frontier
of the Promised Land, of which I can scarcely obtain, from the
mountain’s summit, a distant and dejected view. Grave people will here
say that it is always wrong to act differently from everybody else,
and to attempt to play the Turk, when one is but a mere Nazarene from
Europe. Are they perhaps in the right?—Who knows?”

And the eccentric rambler, trying to persuade himself that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, suggests the probability of his five purses becoming the spoil of Bedouins during his journey across the desert, talks of the fatality attaching to all things Eastern, mounts a hired nag purveyed for him by the conscientious Battista, and gallops off with his friend Abou Miran, Emir of Lebanon, belonging to the most illustrious family in the district of Kesrawan, and lord of ten villages, who smiles good-humouredly at the Frenchman’s difficulty in riding Arab fashion, perched on a high saddle, with legs doubled up and brass stirrups as big as fire-shovels. “We had ridden about a league when they showed me the grotto whence had issued the famous dragon which was on the point of devouring the daughter of the King of Beyrout, when St. George pierced it with his lance. The place is held in great reverence by the Greeks, and even by the Turks, who have built a little mosque on the spot where the combat occurred.” For its afternoon meal, the cavalcade halted in the village of Bethmeria, situated on a mountain platform. Here was evidence of the constant feuds between Maronites and Druses.

“We passed a large house, whose crumbling roof and blackened beams
told of a recent conflagration. The prince informed me that the Druses
had set fire to the building, whilst several Maronite families were
celebrating a wedding within its walls. Fortunately, the inmates had
time to escape, but the strangest circumstance was that the
incendiaries were inhabitants of the same village. Bethmeria contains
a mixed population of about a hundred and fifty Maronites and sixty
Druses, with an interval of scarcely two hundred paces between the
houses of the two sects. In consequence of the aggressions of the
Druses, a bloody struggle took place, and the Pasha hastened to
interpose between the hostile divisions of the village a little camp
of Albanians, who lived at the expense of the rival populations. We
had just finished our repast, consisting of curdled milk and fruit,
when the Sheik of the village returned home. After the first
salutations, he began a long conversation with the prince, complaining
bitterly of the presence of the Albanians, and of the general
disarming that had been enforced in his district. He seemed to think
that this measure should have been enforced upon the Druses only, as
they had been guilty of the nocturnal attack and incendiarism. Whilst
continuing our march, my guide informed me that the Maronite
Christians of the province of El Garb, in which we were, had
endeavoured to expel the Druses scattered through several villages,
and that the latter had called to their assistance their
co-religionists of the Anti-Lebanon. Hence one of those struggles
which so often occur. The great strength of the Maronites is in the
province of Kesrawan, situated behind Djebaïl and Tripoli, whilst the
largest masses of the Druses inhabit the provinces that extend from
Beyrout to St Jean d’Acre. The Sheik of Bethmeria complained to the
prince that, in the recent circumstances I have spoken of, the people
of Kesrawan had not stirred; but they had had no time, the Turks
having set up the hue and cry with a promptitude very unusual on their
part. The quarrel had occurred just at the moment of paying the
_miri_. Pay first, said the Turks; afterwards you may fight as much as
you please. It would certainly be rather difficult to collect tribute
from people who were ruining themselves and cutting each other’s
throats at the very moment of the harvest.”

M. de Nerval was invited to take coffee with the Turkish commandant, of whom he inquired whether he could safely visit the Druse portion of the village. “In all safety,” was the reply. “These people are very peaceable since our arrival, otherwise you would have had to fight for the one or the other—for the white cross or the white hand;” the emblems that distinguish the banners of the two parties, both having red grounds. M. de Nerval’s predilection is evidently for the Maronites, who acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Pope, and are particularly patronised by France and Austria. But he did the Druses less than justice if he anticipated other than a good reception at their hands, and soon he was compelled to admit and admire their patriarchal hospitality. He was kindly greeted as he passed, attended only by a lad, before their gardens and houses; the women brought him fresh water and new milk, and positively refused reward. He was delighted with this “more than Scottish hospitality.” At the further end of the village he sat down in the shadow of a wall. He was weary, and the sun was scorching hot.

“An old man came out of the house and pressed me to go in and rest
myself. I thanked him, but declined, for it was growing late, and I
feared my companions might be uneasy at my absence. Seeing that I also
refused refreshment, he said I must not leave him without accepting
something, and he went indoors, and fetched some little apricots and
gave them me; then he insisted upon accompanying me to the end of the
street. He appeared vexed to learn from Moussa that I had breakfasted
with the Christian Sheik. ‘’Tis I who am the true Sheik,’ he said,
‘and _I have a right_ to show hospitality to strangers.’ Moussa told
me that this old man had been the Sheik or lord of the village in the
time of the Emir Béchir; but having espoused the cause of the
Egyptians, the Turkish authorities refused any longer to recognise
him, and the election had fallen on a Maronite.”

The day after his arrival at the Emir’s castle—a Gothic pile with a vast internal court—M. de Nerval was presented to the ladies of the family. They were two in number, and were magnificently dressed for the occasion, with heavy girdles of jewellery, and ornaments of diamonds and rubies, a species of luxurious display carried to a great extent in Syria even amongst women of rank inferior to these.

“As to the horn which the mistress of the house balanced upon her
forehead, and which made her movements resemble those of a swan, it
was of chased enamel studded with turquoises; her hair flowed down
upon her shoulders in tresses intermingled with clusters of sequins,
according to the fashion prevalent in the Levant. The feet of these
ladies, doubled up upon the divan, were stockingless, which is usual
in this country, and gives to beauty an additional charm, very remote
from our ideas. Women who hardly ever walk, who perform, several times
a day, perfumed ablutions, and whose toes are uncramped by shoes,
succeed, as may be imagined, in rendering their feet as charming as
their hands. The henna dye, which reddens the nails, and the
ankle-rings, rich as bracelets, complete the grace and charm of this
portion of the female person, in Europe rather too much sacrificed to
the glory of shoemakers.

After the first day, etiquette and display were laid aside; the ladies resumed their ordinary attire, and superintended their household, then busy gathering in the silk-harvest. Hundreds of women and children were engaged in winding off the cocoons, which hung like golden olives upon sheaves of cut branches piled together in the huts. M. de Nerval soon found himself at home in the Emir’s hospitable castle, and on friendly terms with the ladies, who asked him many questions about Europe, and spoke of several travellers who had visited them. The ideas of the Syrians concerning the state of France and other European countries are not generally very clear or correct. Mr Neale, when at Latachia, (a name of aromatic sound to smokers,) draws a lamentable picture of their geographical ignorance.

“The chart of the world,” he says, “depicted in their mind’s eye,
consists of Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, and various remote
islands, situated in the centre of a vast ocean. From these islands
all Franks are presumed to come. They consider the nations of the
earth to consist of the Jews, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Syrians,
and the Franks, who, according to their notions, form one empire,
speak one tongue, and are of one religion. As for the different flags,
they ascribe this variety solely to the conflicting tastes of the
different consular agents.”

With respect to politics, the people of Lebanon have derived many contradictory ideas from their European visitors, a large proportion of whom are French Legitimists on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The feuds and divisions of the Franks can have no very strong interest for these Turk-governed Christians and Druses, engrossed as they are by their own dissensions. M. de Nerval had passed some time with his mountaineer friends, hawking, banqueting, and making excursions to convents and other objects of interest, when one evening, just as he was thinking of redescending into the plain, news came of an inroad of the Druses into the districts which had been disarmed by orders of the Pasha of Beyrout. The province of Kesrawan, which belongs to the pashalik of Tripoli, had kept its arms, and Prince Abou Miran mustered his men to march to the assistance of his co-religionists. M. de Nerval accompanied him, planning exploits which were to immortalise his name. These reduced themselves, however, to a fierce onslaught upon a cactus-hedge, which he gallantly cut in pieces with his yataghan, thus opening a passage to some Maronite horsemen who accompanied him, and who, finding no enemy, began to wreak their vengeance upon mulberry and olive trees, the chief wealth of the unfortunate Druses. The Frenchman presently discovered, to his shame and regret, that the plantations thus ravaged were part of the very village in which he had been so hospitably treated on his first arrival in the mountains. The Emir came up and checked the work of brutal destruction; the alarm proved false; the Druses were quiet and had made no incursion, and M. de Nerval was defrauded of his anticipated glory. He returned to Beyrout, and went to call on Madame Carlès, in whose care he had left the yellow slave. Zeynab was gentle and contented, but would do little or nothing. She picked up a few words of French from the children of the school, but would learn nothing useful, for fear she should be made to work, and thus degraded to the rank of a servant. Her progress towards the religion of Rome was very slow. When shown a picture of the Virgin, she reminded her instructor that it had been written, “Thou shalt not worship images.” M. de Nerval set it down as a hopeless case. Madame Carlès was still sanguine of success. The versatile traveller’s attention, however, was quickly distracted from Zeynab by the fair-haired, taperfingered daughter of a Druse Sheik, then in prison at Beyrout for refusing to recognise the Turkish government, and for non-payment of the tribute. His property had been sequestrated, and all had abandoned him except the beautiful Saléma, who boarded with Madame Carlès, and went every day to see her father. M. de Nerval, whose imagination was excited by the romantic and unusual scenes he had lately passed through, fell in love with this Arab damsel, went to visit her father, who was an _akkal_, a sort of sage and saint; and after much conversation, and receiving a long account of Hakem, the founder of the Druse religion, he embarked for Acre to obtain from the Pasha the pardon of his future father-in-law. For he had made up his mind to marry Saléma.

The Levantines are unable to comprehend the squirrel-like restlessness of the Franks, remarks M. de Nerval, whilst pacing to and fro the deck of the English brig on which he had taken his passage, and occasionally stumbling over the legs of a Turk or Bedouin who lay upon his mattress in the shadow of the bulwarks, and who removed his pipe from his lips to curse the clumsiness of the Christian. The English missionary was also a passenger; but M. de Nerval barely tolerates the English, and fancied that the evangelical gentleman treated him coldly because he consorted with a second-class passenger, a talkative bagman from Marseilles, who had got a curious theory, exaggerated but not unfounded, concerning the very small number of pure Turks remaining in Turkey.

“I have just come from Constantinople,” he said: “one sees nothing
there but Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Marseillese. All the Turks they
can find they make into cadis, ulemas, pashas, or they send them to
Europe to show them. All their children die; it is a race that is
becoming extinguished. People talk of the Sultan’s armies—of what do
they consist? Of Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Kurds; the sailors
are Greeks; only the officers are of Turkish race. You take them out
to fight; they all run away at the first cannon-shot, as has often
been seen—unless the English are behind them with their bayonets, as
in the Syrian affair.”

In Syrian waters, and with the shattered minarets of Acre looming in the distance, a Frenchman might be excused for showing a little irritability. M. de Nerval behaves very well upon the occasion, and spares the unfortunate English, doubtless thinking he is sufficiently hard upon them in other parts of his book, especially when he excludes them from the European family, as dwellers “upon an island apart;” a separation upon which, considering the very turbulent and divided state of that family, they have certainly of late years had much reason to congratulate themselves. Fresh from the semi-feudal magnificence of the Lebanon Emir’s castle, and dreaming of the proud battlements of the Templars’ famous city, the last rampart of the crusades, M. de Nerval gazed mournfully on the heaps of ruins revealed to him by the rising sun a few hours after his arrival in the port of Acre. It may console him to learn from Mr Neale, who was there last year, that the fortifications are being rapidly repaired, and that soon there will remain but few traces of the ravages of British shot and shell. But the French traveller was too engrossed by the main object of his visit to Acre to dwell long upon such dry matters as broken battlements. He could not but feel moved, however, when at daybreak the Marseillese awoke him and showed him the morning star shining just over the village of Nazareth, only eight leagues distant. He proposed to his new acquaintance to make an excursion thither, but the matter-of-fact bagman threw cold water upon the project. “It is a pity,” he said, “that the Virgin’s house is no longer there. Of course you know that angels transported it in a single night to Loretto, near Venice. Here they show its site—that is all. It is not worth while going so far to see a thing that is no longer there.” Whilst thus damping his companion’s enthusiasm, the prosaic child of Provence made himself very useful by his knowledge of Turkish habits. On learning that M. de Nerval had known the Pasha of Acre at Paris, and had a letter of recommendation to him, which he was about to present, he advised him to resume his European dress, as likely to procure him an earlier audience. In those latitudes, the bagman was as good as a court-guide. He had known the Pasha at Constantinople, where he went by the nickname of _Guezluk_, or the spectacle-wearer. And he begged M. de Nerval to tell him that he had for sale a musical clock, which played airs out of numerous Italian operas, and which had birds on the top of it, who sang and flapped their wings. This was exactly the thing, he said, to delight the Turks. Duly black-coated, but retaining his Turkish tarbusch to cover his shaven head, M. de Nerval presented himself at the summer kiosk then occupied by the Pasha. His European garb drew all eyes upon him; by refusing to take off his boots at the door, he further increased his importance; his letter was taken in to the Pasha, and he was at once admitted in preference to a crowd of persons who were waiting for that honour.

“I expected a European reception, but the Pasha confined himself to
making me sit down near him on a divan which extended round part of
the saloon. He affected to speak only Italian, although I had heard
him speak French at Paris; and, having addressed to me the customary
phrase: ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ that is to say, do you find yourself
well? he ordered the chibouque and coffee to be brought to me. Some
commonplace remarks composed our conversation. Then the Pasha
repeated, ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ and another cup of coffee was brought.
I had been walking the streets of Acre all the morning, and had
crossed the plain without falling in with anything like an
eating-house; I had even refused a piece of bread and a slice of Arles
sausage offered me by the Marseillese, reckoning a little on Mussulman
hospitality; but who shall depend upon the friendship of the great?
Our conversation continued, without the Pasha’s offering me anything
more substantial than tobacco smoke and sugarless coffee. For the
third time he repeated, ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ I rose to take leave.
Just then noon struck upon a clock suspended over my head, and which
forthwith began to play a tune; almost immediately a second clock
struck, and began a different air; a third and a fourth set off in
their turn. The discordant effect may be imagined. Accustomed as I was
to Turkish eccentricities, I could not understand the assemblage of so
many clocks in one room. The Pasha seemed enchanted with the noise,
and proud to show a European his love of progress and civilisation.
The commission given to me by the Marseillese occurred to me, but the
negotiation appeared so much the more difficult that the four clocks
were symmetrically placed, each on one of the four sides of the
apartment. Where could a fifth be put? I said nothing about it.
Neither did I deem it an opportune moment to broach the business of
the captive Sheik, but kept this delicate matter for another visit,
when the Pasha should perhaps receive me less coldly. Alleging
business in the town, I took my leave. As I passed through the court,
an officer came up to me, and said that the Pasha had ordered two
_cavass_ to accompany me whithersoever I went. I did not exaggerate to
myself the value of this attention, which generally amounts to a heavy
_bakshish_ to be given to each of the said attendants.”

Once more in the town, M. de Nerval, feeling ravenous, asked his guard of honour where he could get breakfast. They stared, and said it was not yet the hour, but, as he insisted, they asked him for a Spanish dollar to purchase fowls and rice, which they proposed cooking in the nearest guard-house. This appeared to him both an expensive and a complicated manner of obtaining a meal, and he went to the French Consulate; but the Consul lived on the other side of the bay, on the skirts of Mount Carmel.

“Acre, during the summer months,” says Mr Neale, “is considered the
most fatal residence for Europeans on the western coast of the
Mediterranean. Its fevers are so pernicious that few survive an attack
for a longer space than forty-eight hours. So trivial are the causes
which give rise to this malignant disease, that the smallest deviation
from a temperate regimen, or the slightest exposure to heat or cold,
renders one liable to an immediate attack, and, as the doctor coolly
told me, _ensuite vous succombez_.”

To avoid which unpleasant eventuality, the European residents have country houses. Little disposed to go as far as Mount Carmel for a breakfast, M. de Nerval went to the bazaar, and hunted up the Marseillese, whom he found in the act of selling to a Greek merchant an assortment of those old warming-pan watches, now out of fashion in Europe, but which the Turks greatly prefer to the modern flat ones. With them the value of a watch is estimated by its size. The Marseillese produced the never-failing sausage, upon which, and upon unleavened bread, the only sort obtainable, the hungry Parisian made an indifferent repast. They offered some sausage to the two _cavass_, who refused, from a religious scruple. “Poor devils!” said the bagman, contemptuously, “they think it is pork; they do not know that Arles sausage is made of mule’s flesh.” A fact which may also be rather novel to some of the English consumers of the monster sausages sold in Italian warehouses, into many of which not a morsel of pig enters. Rendered expansive by his meal, M. de Nerval confided to the Marseillese the story of his love for the Druse maiden, and the object of his visit to Acre. The dealer in clocks and watches, who, for common sense, was worth ten of his companion, evidently thought him a fool for his pains, and, with a view to discourage his folly, told him curious anecdotes of the religious practices of certain Druse sects, practices certainly well calculated to scandalise a European. The day wore on, and when the hour of dinner approached, M. de Nerval was informed by his attendants that he was expected at the Pasha’s table. This was unexpected by him, but a matter of course—so his bagman informed him—since the Pasha had given him an escort. When he reached the kiosk the levee had long been over. Passing through the clock-room, he found the Pasha smoking, seated upon the window-ledge of the apartment beyond. The Turk rose on his approach, held out his hand, and asked him how he was, in excellent French. M. de Nerval could not conceal his surprise. “You must excuse me,” said his host, “if I received you this morning _en pasha_. Those worthy people who were waiting for an audience would never have forgiven me had I been wanting in etiquette with a Frangi. At Constantinople, every one would understand it; but here we are in a country town.” Méhmet Pasha had studied at the artillery school at Metz, and spoke French exceedingly well. He was amiable, affable, and courteous. He and his guest dined tête-à-tête, at a table, and seated on chairs, in the European fashion. M. de Nerval, in his passion for Orientalism, would rather have squatted on a cushion upon the floor. After dinner, instead of the introduction of dancing-girls, or some other Eastern amusement, he was taken down stairs to a billiard-room, where the Pasha made him play till one in the morning.