a. "Did you
like Damascus?" somebody once carelessly asked Mrs. Burton.

"Like it!" she exclaimed, quivering with emotion, "My eyes fill, and my
heart throbs even at the thought of it."

Indeed, they always looked back with wistful, melancholy regret upon the
two intercalary years of happiness by the crystalline Chrysorrhoa, and
Mrs. Burton could never forget that last sad ride through the beloved
Plain of Zebedani. Among those who visited the Burtons at Trieste, was
Alfred Bates Richards. After describing Mrs. Burton's sanctuary, he
says: "Thus far, the belongings are all of the cross, but no sooner are
we landed in the little drawing-rooms than signs of the crescent
appear. These rooms, opening one into another, are bright with Oriental
hangings, with trays and dishes of gold and burnished silver, fantastic
goblets, chibouques with great amber mouth-pieces, and Eastern treasure
made of odorous woods." Burton liked to know that everything about him
was hand-made. "It is so much better," he used to say, than the "poor,
dull work of machinery." In one of the book-cases was Mrs. Burton's set
of her husband's works, some fifty volumes. [274]

Mr. Richards thus describes Burton himself, "Standing about five feet
eleven, his broad, deep chest and square shoulders reduce his apparent
height very considerably, and the illusion is intensified by hands and
feet of Oriental smallness. The Eastern and distinctly Arab look of
the man is made more pronounced by prominent cheek-bones (across one of
which is the scar of a javelin cut), by closely-cropped black hair, just
tinged with grey, and a pair of piercing, black, gipsy-looking eyes."
Out of doors, in summer, Burton wore a spotlessly white suit, a tie-pin
shaped like a sword, a pair of fashionable, sharply-pointed shoes, and
the shabbiest old white beaver hat that he could lay his hands upon. On
his finger glittered a gold ring, engraved with the word "Tanganyika."
[275] In appearance, indeed, he was a compound of the dandy, the
swash-buckler and the literary man. He led Mr. Richards through the
house. Every odd corner displayed weapons--guns, pistols, boar-spears,
swords of every shape and make. On one cupboard was written "The
Pharmacy." It contained the innocuous medicines for Mrs. Burton's
poor--for she still continued to manufacture those pills and drenches
that had given her a reputation in the Holy Land. "Why," asked Richards,
"do you live in a flat and so high up?" "To