THE CASTLE, ALEPPO
Though my stay was short I was not without acquaintances, among whom the most important was the Vāli. Kiāzim Pasha is a man of very different stamp from the Vāli of Damascus. To the extent that the latter is, according to his lights, a real statesman, in so far is Kiāzim nothing but a farceur. He received me in his harem, for which I was grateful when I saw his wife, who is one of the most beautiful women that it is possible to behold. She is tall and stately, with a small dark head, set on magnificent shoulders, a small straight nose, a pointed chin and brows arching over eyes that are like dark pools—I could not take mine from her face while she sat with us. Both she and her husband are Circassians, a fact that had put me on my guard before the Vāli opened his lips. They both spoke French, and he spoke it very well. He received me in an offhand manner, and his first remark was:
"Je suis le jeune pasha qui a fait la paix entre les églises."
I knew enough of his history to realise that he had been Muteserrif of Jerusalem at a time when the rivalries between the Christian sects had ended in more murders than are customary, and that some kind of uneasy compromise had been reached, whether through his ingenuity or the necessities of the case I had not heard.
"How old do you think I am?" said the pasha.
I replied tactfully that I should give him thirty-five years.
"Thirty-six!" he said triumphantly. "But the consuls listened to me. Mon Dieu! that was a better post than this, though I am Vāli now. Here I have no occasion to hold conferences with the consuls, and a man like me needs the society of educated Europeans."
(Mistrust the second: an Oriental official, who declares that he prefers the company of Europeans.)
"I am very Anglophil," said he.
I expressed the gratitude of my country in suitable terms.