The fashionable lover in the East must affect a frantic jealousy if he does not feel it.
[589]. In Egypt there are neither bedsteads nor bed-rooms: the carpets and mattresses, pillows and cushions (sheets being unknown) are spread out when wanted, and during the day are put into chests or cupboards, or only rolled up in a corner of the room (Pilgrimage i., 53).
[590]. The women of Damascus have always been famed for the sanguinary jealousy with which European story-books and novels credit the "Spanish lady." The men were as celebrated for intolerance and fanaticism, which we first read of in the days of Bertrandon de la Brocquière and which culminated in the massacre of 1860. Yet they are a notoriously timid race and make, physically and morally, the worst of soldiers: we proved that under my late friend Fred. Walpole in the Bashi-Buzuks during the old Crimean war. The men looked very fine fellows and after a month in camp fell off to the condition of old women.
[591]. Arab. "Rukhám," properly=alabaster and "Marmar"=marble; but the two are often confounded.
[592]. He was ceremonially impure after touching a corpse.
[593]. The phrase is perfectly appropriate: Cairo without "her Nile" would be nothing.
[594]. "The market was hot" say the Hindustanis. This would begin between 7 and 8 a.m.
[595]. Arab. Al-Faranj, Europeans generally. It is derived from "Gens Francorum," and dates from Crusading days when the French played the leading part. Hence the Lingua Franca, the Levantine jargon, of which Molière has left such a witty specimen.
[596]. A process familiar to European surgery of the same date.
[597]. In sign of disappointment, regret, vexation; a gesture still common amongst Moslems and corresponding in significance to a certain extent with our stamping, wringing the hands and so forth. It is not mentioned in the Koran where, however, we find "biting fingers' ends out of wrath" against a man (chapt. iii).