me one with its hollow cheeks, meagre beard and large
aquiline nose--for it was lighted up by a pair of bright eyes, full
of attractive thoughtfulness and genuine kindness. But that this
fragile-looking man, in whose benevolent countenance grief and
infirmities had graven many a furrow, could not only command but compel
submission was legible alike in his thin, firmly-closed lips and in the
zeal with which his following of truculent and bearded fighting men,
armed to the teeth, obeyed his slightest sign.

His Egyptian attendant, the head of the Hermeneutai--the guild of the
Dragomans of that period--was a swarthy and surly native of Memphis;
whenever he accidentally came too close to the fierce-looking riders of
the dromedaries he shrunk his shoulders as if he expected a blow or a
push, while he poured out question and answer to the Merchant Haschim,
the owner of the caravan, without timidity and with the voluble
garrulity of his tribe.

"You seem very much at home here in Memphis," he observed, when the old
man had expressed his surprise at the decadence and melancholy change in
the city.

"Thirty years ago," replied the merchant, "my business often brought me
hither. How many houses are now empty and in ruins where formerly only
heavy coin could secure admittance! Ruins on all sides!--Who has so
cruelly mutilated that fine church? My fellow-believers left every
Christian fane untouched--that I know from our chief Amru himself."

"It was the principal church of the Melchites, the Emperor's minions,"
cried the guide, as if that were ample explanation of the fact. The
merchant, however, did not take it so.

"Well," he said, "and what is there so dreadful in their creed?"

"What?" said the Egyptian, and his eye flashed wrathfully. "What?--They
dismember the divine person of the Saviour and attribute to it two
distinct natures. And then!--All the Greeks settled here, and encouraged
by the protection of the emperor, treated us, the owners of the land,
like slaves, till your nation came to put an end to their oppression.
They drove us by force into their churches, and every true-born Egyptian
was punished as a rebel and a leper. They mocked at us and persecuted us
for our faith in the one divine nature of our Lord."

"And so," interrupted the merchant, "as soon as we drove out the
Greeks you behaved more unmercifully to them and their sanctuaries than
we--whom you scorn as infidels--did to you!"

"Mercy?--for them!"