“Alas! no. He was murdered at Cairo.”
“We shall be comrades?”
“Yes, I hope it, indeed.”
“Have you a mother?”
“Alas! no,” answered Max.
“Then we shall be brothers. I, too, am alone—I have no one but my uncle.”
“I have no one at all.”
“He shall be your uncle, and I will be your brother. But who is she?”
“I told you—she is my guide.”
“No, Max. She may be a princess, a queen; she is a beauty, as lovely as she is eloquent, and as poetic as the birds which fly above the gardens of Paradise.”