‘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.’