As the new comer entered the hall, he shuffled off his slippers at the threshold, and then advancing, and pressing a hand to his brow, his mouth and his heart, a salutation which signifies that in thought, speech, and feeling he was faithful to his host, and which salutation was immediately returned, he took his seat upon the divan, and the master of the house, letting the flexible tube of his nargileh fall on one of the cushions, and clapping his hands, a page immediately brought a pipe to the new guest. This was Signor Pasqualigo, one of those noble Venetian names that every now and then turn up in the Levant, and borne in the present case by a descendant of a family who for centuries had enjoyed a monopoly of some of the smaller consular offices of the Syrian coast. Signor Pasqualigo had installed his son as deputy in the ambiguous agency at Jaffa, which he described as a vice-consulate, and himself principally resided at Jerusalem, of which he was the prime gossip, or second only to his rival, Barizy of the Tower. He had only taken a preliminary puff of his chibouque, to be convinced that there was no fear of its being extinguished, before he said,
‘So there was a fine pilgrimage last night; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lighted up from sunset to sunrise, an extra guard in the court, and only the Spanish prior and two brethren permitted to enter. It must be 10,000 piastres at least in the coffers of the Terra Santa. Well, they want something! It is a long time since we have had a Latin pilgrim in El Khuds.’
‘And they say, after all, that this was not a Latin pilgrim,’ said Barizy of the Tower.
‘He could not have been one of my people,’ said the Armenian, ‘or he never would have gone to the Holy Sepulchre with the Spanish prior.’
‘Had he been one of your people,’ said Pasqualigo, ‘he could not have paid 10,000 piastres for a pilgrimage.’
‘I am sure a Greek never would,’ said Barizy, ‘unless he were a Russian prince.’
‘And a Russian does not care much for rosaries unless they are made of diamonds,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘As far as I can make out this morning,’ said Barizy of the Tower, ‘it is a brother of the Queen of England.’
‘I was thinking it might be that,’ said Pasqualigo, nettled at his rival’s early information, ‘the moment I heard he was an Englishman.’
‘The English do not believe in the Holy Sepulchre,’ said the Armenian, calmly.