‘Intrigue!’ exclaimed the prince, starting from the cushion near the tripod, on which he sat, speaking with great animation and using, as was his custom, a superfluity of expression, both of voice and hands and eyes, ‘intrigue! It is life! It is the only thing! How do you think Guizot and Aberdeen got to be ministers without intrigue? Or Riza Pasha himself? How do you think Mehemet Ali got on? Do you believe Sir Canning never intrigues? He would be recalled in a week if he did not. Why, I have got one of his spies in my castle at this moment, and I make him write home for the English all that I wish them not to believe. Intrigue! Why, England won India by intrigue. Do you think they are not intriguing in the Punjaub at this moment? Intrigue has gained half the thrones of Europe: Greece, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Russia. If you wish to produce a result, you must make combinations; and you call combinations, Eva, intrigue!’
‘And this is the scrape that you are in,’ said the lady. ‘I do not see how I can help you out of it.’
‘Pardon; this is not the scrape: and here comes the point on which I need your aid, daughter of a thousand sheikhs! I can extricate myself from the Paris disaster, even turn it to account. I have made an alliance with the patriarch of the Lebanon, who manages affairs for the Emir Bescheer. The patriarch hates Murad, whom you see I was to have made patriarch. I am to declare the Archbishop an unauthorised agent, an adventurer, and my letter to be a forgery. The patriarch is to go to Stamboul, with his long white beard, and put me right with France, through De Bourqueney, with whom he has relations in favour of the Emir Bescheer; my uncle is to be thrown over; all the Maronite chiefs are to sign a declaration supplicating the Porte to institute me; nay, the declaration is signed——’
‘And the Druses? Will not this Maronite manifestation put you wrong with the Druses?’
‘I live among the Druses, you see,’ said Fakredeen, shaking his head, and looking with his glittering eye a thousand meanings. ‘The Druses love me. They know that I am one of themselves. They will only think that I have made the Maronites eat sand.’
‘And what have you really done for the Maronites to gain all this?’ asked the lady, quietly.
‘There it is,’ said Fakredeen, speaking in an affected whisper, ‘the greatest stroke of state that ever entered the mind of a king without a kingdom, for I am resolved that the mountain shall be a royalty I You remember when Ibrahim Pasha laid his plans for disarming the Lebanon, the Maronites, urged by their priests, fell into the snare, while the Druses wisely went with their muskets and scimitars, and lived awhile with the eagle and the antelope. This has been sand to the Maronites ever since. The Druses put their tongues in their cheek whenever they meet, and treat them as so many women. The Porte, of course, will do nothing for the Maronites; they even take back the muskets which they lent them for the insurrection. Well, as the Porte will not arm them, I have agreed to do it.’
‘You!’
‘’Tis done; at least the caravan is laden; we only want a guide. And this is why I am at Jerusalem. Scheriff Effendi, who met me here yesterday, has got me five thousand English muskets, and I have arranged with the Bedouin of Zoalia to carry them to the mountain.’
‘You have indeed Solomon’s signet, my dear Fakredeen.’