Exchanging between themselves glances of contempt at the lords of Lebanon, who were ignorant of what everybody knows, they exhibited the arms without the slightest interest or anxiety to make the Sheikhs comprehend them; till Tancred, mortified at their brutality, himself interfered, and, having already no inconsiderable knowledge of the language of the country, though, from his reserve, Fakredeen little suspected the extent of his acquirements, explained felicitously to his companions the process of the arms; and then taking his rifle, and stepping out upon the terrace, he levelled his piece at a heron which was soaring at a distance of upwards of one hundred yards, and brought the bird down amid the applause both of Maronite and Druse.
‘He is sent here, I understand,’ said Butros Keramy, ‘to ascertain for the Queen of the English whether the country is in favour of the Shehaabs. Could you believe it, but I was told yesterday at Deir el Kamar, that the English consul has persuaded the Queen that even the patriarch was against the Shehaabs?’
‘Is it possible?’ said Rafael Farah, a Maronite of the House of Eldadah. ‘It must be the Druses who circulate these enormous falsehoods.’
‘Hush!’ said Young Syria, in the shape of Francis El Kazin, ‘there is no longer Maronite or Druse: we are all Syrians, we are brothers.’
‘Then a good many of my brothers are sons of Eblis,’ said Butros Keramy. ‘I hope he is not my father.’
‘Truly, I should like to see the mountain without the Maronite nation,’ said Rafael Farah. ‘That would be a year without rain.’
‘And mighty things your Maronite nation has done!’ rejoined Francis El Kazin. ‘If there had been the Syrian nation instead of the Maronite nation, and the Druse nation, and half a dozen other nations besides, instead of being conquered by Egypt in 1832, we should have conquered Egypt ourselves long ago, and have held it for our farm. We have done mighty things truly with our Maronite nation!’
‘To hear an El Kazin speak against the Maronite nation!’ exclaimed Rafael Farah, with a look of horror; ‘a natipn that has two hundred convents!’
‘And a patriarch,’ said Butros Keramy, ‘very much respected even by the Pope of Rome.’
‘And who were disarmed like sheep,’ said Francis.