re characteristics unlike those they had
ever met before in Europeans.

"A madman," whispered High Pasha to Achmet the Ropemaker.

"Then his will be the fate of the swine of Gadarene," said Nahoum Pasha,
who had heard.

"At least one need not argue with a madman." The face of Achmet the
Ropemaker was not more pleasant than his dark words.

"It is not the madman with whom you have to deal, but his keeper,"
rejoined Nahoum.

Nahoum's face was heavier than usual. Going to weight, he was still
muscular and well groomed. His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes
gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in
every gesture.

He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love
to carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost
religious. It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy--it
carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to
impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward
urbanity, a philosophical apathy. He had had his great fight for place
and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt
since a child. Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had
been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself
from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim
creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of
marriage and inheritance. He could shrug his shoulders and play with his
beads, and urbanely explain his own helplessness and ineligibility when
his influence was summoned, or it was sought to entangle him in warring
interests. Oriental through and through, the basis of his creed was
similar to that of a Muslim: Mahomet was a prophet and Christ was a
prophet. It was a case of rival prophets--all else was obscured into a
legend, and he saw the strife of race in the difference of creed. For
the rest, he flourished the salutations and language of the Arab as
though they were his own, and he spoke Arabic as perfectly as he did
French and English.

He was the second son of his father. The first son, who was but a year
older, and was as dark as he was fair, had inherited--had seized--all
his father's wealth. He had lived abroad for some years in France and
England. In the latter place he had been one of the Turkish Embassy,
and, having none of the outward characteristics of the Turk, and being
in appearance more of a Spaniard than an