arrison of the city,' said
Barizy, with great derision.

'They are eight hundred strong,' said Pasqualigo.

'Eight hundred weak, you mean. No, as Raphael Tafna was saying, when
Mehemet. Ali was master, the tribes were quiet enough. But the Turks
could never manage the Arabs, even in their best days. If the Pasha of
Damascus were to go himself, the Bedouins would unveil his harem while
he was smoking his nargileh.'

'Then England will call upon the Egyptians,' said the Consul.

'Hah!' said Barizy of the Tower, 'have I got you at last? Now comes
your crisis, I grant you. The English will send a ship of war with a
protocol, and one of their lords who is a sailor: that is the way. They
will call upon the pasha to exterminate the tribe who have murdered the
brother of their queen; the pasha will reply, that when he was in Syria
the brothers of queens were never murdered, and put the protocol in his
turban. This will never satisfy Palmerston; he will order----'

'Palmerston has nothing to do with it,' screamed out Pasqualigo; 'he is
no longer Reis Effendi; he is in exile; he is governor of the Isle of
Wight.'

'Do you think I do not know that?' said Barizy of the Tower; 'but he
will be recalled for this purpose. The English will not go to war in
Syria without Palmerston. Palmerston will have the command of the fleet
as well as of the army, that no one shall say "No" when he says "Yes."
The English will not do the business of the Turks again for nothing.
They will take this city; they will keep it. They want a new market for
their cottons. Mark me: England will never be satisfied till the people
of Jerusalem wear calico turbans.'

Let us inquire also with Barizy of the Tower, where was Besso? Alone in
his private chamber, agitated and troubled, awaiting the return of
his daughter from the bath; and even now, the arrival may be heard of
herself and her attendants in the inner court.

'You want me, my father?' said Eva, as she entered. 'Ah! you are
disturbed. What has happened?'

'The tenth plague of Pharaoh, my child,' replied Besso, in a tone of
great vexation. 'Since the expulsion of Ibrahim, there has been nothing
which has crossed me so much.'

'Fakredeen?'

'No, no; 'tis nothing to do with him, poor boy; but of one as young, and
whose interests, though I know him not, scarcely less concern me.'

'You know him not; 'tis not then my cousin. You perplex me, my father.
Tell me at once.'

'It is the most vexati