RĀS UL 'AIN, BA'ALBEK
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to society and to fruitless attempts to escape from the curiosity of the townsfolk. It was a Friday afternoon, and no better way of spending it occurred to them than to assemble to the number of many hundreds round my tents and observe every movement of every member of the camp. The men were bad enough, but the women were worse and the children were the worst of all. Nothing could keep them off, and the excitement reached a climax when 'Abd ul Ḥamed Pasha Druby, the richest man in Ḥomṣ, came to call, bringing with him the Ḳāḍi Muḥammad Sāid ul Khāni. I could not pay as much attention to their delightful and intelligent conversation as it deserved, owing to the seething crowd that surrounded us, but an hour later I returned their call at the Pasha's fine new house at the gate of the town, accompanied thither by at least three hundred people. I must have breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed upon my escort, for as I established myself in the cool and quiet liwan, 'Abd ul Ḥamed said:
CEDARS OF LEBANON
"Please God the populace does not trouble your Excellency; for if so we will order out a regiment of soldiers."
I murmured a half-hearted refusal of his offer, though I would have been glad to have seen those little boys shot down by volleys of musketry, and the Pasha added reflectively:
"The Emperor of the Germans when he was in Damascus gave orders that no one was to be forbidden to come and gaze on him."
With this august example before me I saw that I must bear the penalties of greatness and foreignness without complaint.