"You must tell me about the palace. I shall want to picture it to my friends when I tell them about it. It's very old, isn't it? It must have seen a great deal of life."
"Ah, yes, it has seen life—and what life! Quelle vie!" A flash of real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence of his handsome features.
"Have you seen those old rooms? Those rooms that were built by the Mamelukes? There is nothing now in Cairo like them."
"I thought them very beautiful," said the girl. "Tell me about those Mamelukes who lived here."
"They were men," he said with pride, his eyes kindling, "men who lived as kings dare not live to-day!" The subject of those old days and those old ancestors of his was evidently dear to the young modern, and he launched into an animated sketch of those times, trying to picture for Arlee something of the glowing pageant of the past. And as she listened she found her own high spirit stirring in sympathy with the barbaric strength of those old nobles, riding to battle on their fiery Arab steeds, waging their private wars, brooking no affront, no command, working no other man's will.
"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless.... And taste? Taste is a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"
"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.
He nodded. "It should be the concern of nobles—not of the rabble. That is why I should hate your America—where the rabble prevail."
"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"
"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those nobles were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he knew it—and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes.... The Mamelukes were fêted and courted, and then, as they were leaving the Citadel—you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's, "and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls, between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken leave of their Sultan—they were a picture of such pride and pomp as Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery—the great gates closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the hosts of death—the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last moan and hiccough of blood."