nvoked on the murderers of his children and the
oppressors and torturers of his people had come upon them; his revenge
was complete. But, in the midst of his satisfaction at this strange
fulfilment of the fervent wish of years, his conscience had lifted up its
voice; new, and hitherto unknown terrors had come upon him. He lacked the
strength of mind to be a hero or a reformer. Too great an event had been
wrought through his agency, too fearful a doom visited on thousands of
men! The Christian Faith--to him the highest consideration--had been too
greatly imperilled by his act, for the thought that he had caused all
this to be calmly endurable. The responsibility proved too heavy for his
shoulders; and whenever he repeated to himself that it was not he who had
invited the Arabs into the land, and that he must have been crushed in
the attempt to repel them, he could hear voices all round him denouncing
him as the man who had surrendered his native land to them, and he
fancied himself environed by dangers--believing those who spoke to him of
assassins sent forth by the Byzantines to kill him.--But even more
appalling, was his dread of the wrath of Heaven against the man who had
betrayed a Christian country to the Infidels. Even his consciousness of
having been, all his life long, a right-minded, just man could not
fortify him against this terror; there was but one thing which could
raise his quelled spirit: the white pillules which had long been as
indispensable to him as air and water. The kind-hearted old bishop of
Memphis, Plotinus, and his clergy had forgiveness for all; the Patriarch
Benjamin, on the contrary, had treated him as a reprobate sentenced to
eternal damnation, though at the time of this prelate's exile in the
desert he had hailed the Arabs as their deliverers from the tyranny of
the Melchites, and though George had principally contributed to his
recall and reinstatement, and had therefore counted on his support. And,
although the Mukaukas could clearly see through the secondary motives
which influenced the Patriarch, he nevertheless believed that Benjamin's
office as Shepherd of souls gave him power to close the Gates of Heaven
against any sheep in his flock.

The more firmly the Arabs took root in his land, the wiser their rule,
and the, more numerous the Egyptian converts from the Cross to the
Crescent, the greater he deemed his guilt; and when, after the
accomplishment of his work of vengeance--his double