turf near to his powerful antagonist, might have been
compared to his sheeny and crescent-formed sabre, with its narrow and
light but bright and keen Damascus blade, contrasted with the long and
ponderous Gothic war-sword which was flung unbuckled on the same sod.
The Emir was in the very flower of his age, and might perhaps have been
termed eminently beautiful, but for the narrowness of his forehead and
something of too much thinness and sharpness of feature, or at least
what might have seemed such in a European estimate of beauty.

The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful, and decorous;
indicating, however, in some particulars, the habitual restraint which
men of warm and choleric tempers often set as a guard upon their native
impetuosity of disposition, and at the same time a sense of his own
dignity, which seemed to impose a certain formality of behaviour in him
who entertained it.

This haughty feeling of superiority was perhaps equally entertained by
his new European acquaintance, but the effect was different; and the
same feeling, which dictated to the Christian knight a bold, blunt, and
somewhat careless bearing, as one too conscious of his own importance
to be anxious about the opinions of others, appeared to prescribe to the
Saracen a style of courtesy more studiously and formally observant of
ceremony. Both were courteous; but the courtesy of the Christian seemed
to flow rather from a good humoured sense of what was due to others;
that of the Moslem, from a high feeling of what was to be expected from
himself.

The provision which each had made for his refreshment was simple, but
the meal of the Saracen was abstemious. A handful of dates and a morsel
of coarse barley-bread sufficed to relieve the hunger of the latter,
whose education had habituated them to the fare of the desert, although,
since their Syrian conquests, the Arabian simplicity of life frequently
gave place to the most unbounded profusion of luxury. A few draughts
from the lovely fountain by which they reposed completed his meal. That
of the Christian, though coarse, was more genial. Dried hog's flesh, the
abomination of the Moslemah, was the chief part of his repast; and his
drink, derived from a leathern bottle, contained something better than
pure element. He fed with more display of appetite, and drank with more
appearance of satisfaction, than the Saracen judged it becoming to show
in the performance of a mere bodily funct