Tancred
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Benjamin Disraeli >> Tancred
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'What is this Prince of Franguestan to thee and thine?' said Amalek.
'He comes to our land like his brethren, to see the sun and seek for
treasure in our ruins, and he bears, like all of them, some written
words to your father, saying, "Give to this man what he asks, and we
will give to your people what they ask." I understand all this: they all
come to your father because he deals in money, and is the only man in
Syria who has money. What he pays, he is again paid. Is it not so, Eva?
Daughter of my blood, let there not be strife between us; give me a
million piastres, and a hundred camels to the widow of Sheikh Salem, and
take the brother of the Queen.'
'Camels shall be given to the widow of Sheikh Salem,' said Eva, in a
conciliatory voice; 'but for this ransom of which you speak, my father,
it is not a question as to the number of piastres. If you want a million
of piastres, shall it be said that Besso would not lend, perhaps give,
them to the great Sheikh he loves? But, you see, my father of fathers,
piastres and this Frank stranger are not of the same leaven. Name them
not together, I pray you; mix not their waters. It concerns the honour,
and welfare, and safety, and glory of Besso that you should cover this
youth with a robe of power, and place him upon your best dromedary, and
send him back to El Khuds.' The great Sheikh groaned.
'Have I opened a gate that I am unable to close?' he at length said.
'What is begun shall be finished. Have the children of Rechab been
brought from the sweet wells of Costal to this wilderness ever accursed
to fill their purses with stones? Will they not return and say that my
beard is too white? Yet do I wish that this day was finished. Name then
at once, my daughter, the piastres that you will give; for the prince,
the brother of queens, may to-morrow be dust.' 'How so?' eagerly
inquired Eva. 'He is a Mejnoun,' replied Amalek. 'After the man named
Baroni departed for El Khuds, the Prince of Franguestan would not
rest until he visited Gibel Mousa, and I said "Yes" to all his wishes.
Whether it were his wound inflamed by his journey, or grief at his
captivity, for these Franks are the slaves of useless sorrow, he
returned as wild as Kais, and now lies in his tent, fancying he is still
on Mount Sinai. 'Tis the fifth day of the fever, and Shedad, the son of
Amroo, tells me that the sixth will be fatal unless we can give him the
gall of a phoenix, and such a bird is not to be found in this part of
Arabia.
Now, you are a great hakeem, my child of children; go then to the young
prince, and see what can be done: for if he die, we can scarcely ransom
him, and I shall lose the piastres, and your father the backsheesh which
I meant to have given him on the transaction.'
'This is very woful,' murmured Eva to herself, and not listening to the
latter observations of her grandfather.
At this moment the curtain of the pavilion was withdrawn, and there
stood before them Fakredeen. The moment his eyes met those of Eva, he
covered his face with both his hands.
'How is the Prince of Franguestan?' inquired Amalek.
The young Emir advanced, and threw himself at the feet of Eva. 'We
must entreat the Rose of Sharon to visit him,' he said, 'for there is
no hakeem in Arabia equal to her. Yes, I came to welcome you, and to
entreat you to do this kind office for the most gifted and the most
interesting of beings;' and he looked up in her face with a supplicating
glance.
'And you too, are you fearful,' said Eva, in atone of tender reproach,
'that by his death you may lose your portion of the spoil?'
The Emir gave a deprecating glance of anguish, and then, bending his
head, pressed his lips to the Bedouin robes which she wore. ''Tis the
most unfortunate of coincidences, but believe me, dearest of friends,
'tis only a coincidence. I am here merely by accident; I was hunting, I
was----'
'You will make me doubt your intelligence as well as your good faith,'
said Eva, 'if you persist in such assurances.'
'Ah! if you but knew him,' exclaimed Fakredeen, 'you would believe me
when I tell you that I am ready to sacrifice even my life for his. Far
from sharing the spoil,' he added, in a rapid and earnest whisper, 'I
had already proposed, and could have insured, his escape; when he
went to Sinai, to that unfortunate Sinai. I had two dromedaries here,
thoroughbred; we might have reached Hebron before----'
'You went with him to Sinai?'
'He would not suffer it; he desired, he said, to be silent and to be
alone. One of the Bedouins, who accompanied him, told me that they
halted in the valley, and that he went up alone into the mountain, where
he remained a day and night. When he returned hither, I perceived a
great change in him. His words were quick, his eye glittered like fire;
he told me that he had seen an angel, and in the morning he was as he
is now. I have wept, I have prayed for him in the prayers of every
religion, I have bathed his temples with liban, and hung his tent with
charms. O Rose of Sharon! Eva, beloved, darling Eva, I have faith in no
one but in you. See him, I beseech you, see him! If you but knew him,
if you had but listened to his voice, and felt the greatness of his
thoughts and spirit, it would not need that I should make this entreaty.
But, alas! you know him not; you have never listened to him; you have
never seen him; or neither he, nor I, nor any of us, would have been
here, and have been thus.'
CHAPTER XXXV.
_The New Crusader in Peril_
NOTWITHSTANDING all the prescient care of the Duke and Duchess of
Bellamont, it was destined that the stout arm of Colonel Brace should
not wave by the side of their son when he was first attacked by the
enemy, and now that he was afflicted by a most severe if not fatal
illness, the practised skill of the Doctor Roby was also absent. Fresh
exemplification of what all of us so frequently experience, that the
most sagacious and matured arrangements are of little avail; that no
one is present when he is wanted, and that nothing occurs as it was
foreseen. Nor should we forget that the principal cause of all these
mischances might perhaps be recognised in the inefficiency of the third
person whom the parents of Tancred had, with so much solicitude and at
so great an expense, secured to him as a companion and counsellor in his
travels. It cannot be denied that if the theological attainments of
the Rev. Mr. Bernard had been of a more profound and comprehensive
character, it is possible that Lord Montacute might have deemed it
necessary to embark upon this new crusade, and ultimately to find
himself in the deserts of Mount Sinai. However this may be, one thing
was certain, that Tancred had been wounded without a single sabre of
the Bellamont yeomanry being brandished in his defence; was now lying
dangerously ill in an Arabian tent, without the slightest medical
assistance; and perhaps was destined to quit this world, not only
without the consolation of a priest of his holy Church, but surrounded
by heretics and infidels.
'We have never let any of the savages come near my lord,' said Freeman
to Baroni, on his, return.
'Except the fair young gentleman,' added True-man, 'and he is a
Christian, or as good.'
'He is a prince,' said Freeman, reproachfully. 'Have I not told you so
twenty times? He is what they call in this country a Hameer, and lives
in a castle, where he wanted my lord to visit him. I only wish he had
gone with my lord to Mount Siny; I think it would have come to more
good.'
'He has been very attentive to my lord all the time,' said Trueman;
'indeed, he has never quitted my lord night or day; and only left his
side when we heard the caravan had returned.'
'I have seen him,' said Baroni; 'and now let us enter the tent.'
Upon the divan, his head supported by many cushions, clad in a Syrian
robe of the young Emir, and partly covered with a Bedouin cloak,
lay Tancred, deadly pale, his eyes open and fixed, and apparently
unconscious of their presence. He was lying on his back, gazing on the
roof of the tent, and was motionless. Fakredeen had raised his wounded
arm, which had fallen from the couch, and had supported it with a pile
made of cloaks and pillows. The countenance of Tancred was much changed
since Baroni last beheld him; it was greatly attenuated, but the eyes
glittered with an unearthly fire.
'We don't think he has ever slept,' said Freeman, in a whisper.
'He did nothing but talk to himself the first two days,' said Trueman;
'but yesterday he has been more quiet.'
Baroni advanced to the divan behind the head of Tancred, so that he
might not be observed, and then, letting himself fall noiselessly on the
carpet, he touched with a light finger the pulse of Lord Montacute.
'There is not too much blood here,' he said, shaking his head.
'You don't think it is hopeless?' said Freeman, beginning to blubber.
'And all the great doings of my lord's coming of age to end in this!'
said Trueman. 'They sat down only two less than a hundred at the
steward's table for more than a week!'
Baroni made a sign to them to leave the tent. 'God of my fathers!' he
said, still seated on the ground, his arms folded, and watching Tancred
earnestly with his bright black eyes; 'this is a bad business. This is
death or madness, perhaps both. What will M. de Sidonia say? He loves
not men who fail. All will be visited on me. I shall be shelved. In
Europe they would bleed him, and they would kill him; here they will not
bleed him, and he may die. Such is medicine, and such is life! Now, if I
only had as much opium as would fill the pipe of a mandarin, that would
be something. God of my fathers! this is a bad business.'
He rose softly; he approached nearer to Tancred, and examined his
countenance more closely; there was a slight foam upon the lip, which he
gently wiped away.
'The brain has worked too much,' said Baroni to himself. 'Often have I
watched him pacing the deck during our voyage; never have I witnessed
an abstraction so prolonged and so profound. He thinks as much as M.
de Sidonia, and feels more. There is his weakness. The strength of my
master is his superiority to all sentiment. No affections and a great
brain; these are the men to command the world. No affections and a
little brain; such is the stuff of which they make petty villains. And a
great brain and a great heart, what do they make? Ah! I do not know.
The last, perhaps, wears off with time; and yet I wish I could save this
youth, for he ever attracts me to him.'
Thus he remained for some time seated on the carpet by the side of the
divan, revolving in his mind every possible expedient that might benefit
Tancred, and finally being convinced that none was in his power. What
roused him from his watchful reverie was a voice that called his name
very softly, and, looking round, he beheld the Emir Fakredeen on tiptoe,
with his finger on his mouth. Baroni rose, and Fakredeen inviting him
with a gesture to leave the tent, he found without the lady of the
caravan.
'I want the Rose of Sharon to see your lord,' said the young Emir, very
anxiously, 'for she is a great hakeem among our people.'
'Perhaps in the desert, where there is none to be useful, I might not be
useless,' said Eva, with some reluctance and reserve.
'Hope has only one arrow left,' said Baroni, mournfully.
'Is it indeed so bad?'
'Oh! save him, Eva, save him!' exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly.
She placed her finger on her lip.
'Or I shall die,' continued Fakredeen; 'nor indeed have I any wish to
live, if he depart from us.'
Eva conversed apart for a few minutes with Baroni, in a low voice, and
then drawing aside the curtain of the tent, they entered.
There was no change in the appearance of Tancred, but as they approached
him he spoke. Baroni dropped into his former position, Fakredeen fell
upon his knees, Eva alone was visible when the eyes of Tancred met hers.
His vision was not unconscious of her presence; he stared at her with
intentness. The change in her dress, however, would, in all probability,
have prevented his recognising her even under indifferent circumstances.
She was habited as a Bedouin girl; a leathern girdle encircled her
blue robe, a few gold coins were braided in her hair, and her head was
covered with a fringed kefia.
Whatever was the impression made upon Tancred by this unusual
apparition, it appeared to be only transient. His glance withdrawn, his
voice again broke into incoherent but violent exclamations. Suddenly he
said, with more moderation, but with firmness and distinctness, 'I am
guarded by angels.'
Fakredeen shot a glance at Eva and Baroni, as if to remind them of the
tenor of the discourse for which he had prepared them.
After a pause he became somewhat violent, and seemed as if he would have
waved his wounded arm; but Baroni, whose eye, though himself unobserved,
never quitted his charge, laid his finger upon the arm, and Tancred did
not struggle. Again he spoke of angels, but in a milder and mournful
tone.
'Methinks you look like one,' thought Eva, as she beheld his spiritual
countenance lit up by a superhuman fire.
After a few minutes, she glanced at Baroni, to signify her wish to leave
the tent, and he rose and accompanied her. Fakredeen also rose, with
streaming eyes, and making the sign of the cross.
'Forgive me,' he said to Eva, 'but I cannot help it. Whenever I am in
affliction I cannot help remembering that I am a Christian.'
'I wish you would remember it at all times,' said Eva, 'and then,
perhaps, none of us need have been here;' and then not waiting for his
reply, she addressed herself to Baroni. 'I agree with you,' she said.
'If we cannot give him sleep, he will soon sleep for ever.'
'Oh, give him sleep, Eva,' said Fakredeen, wringing his hands; 'you can
do anything.'
'I suppose,' said Baroni, 'it is hopeless to think of finding any opium
here.'
'Utterly,' said Eva; 'its practice is quite unknown among them.'
'Send for some from El Khuds,' said Fakredeen. 'Idle!' said Baroni;
'this is an affair of hours, not of days.'
'Oh, but I will go,' exclaimed Fakredeen; 'you do not know what I can do
on one of my dromedaries! I will----'
Eva placed her hand on his arm without looking at him, and then
continued to address Baroni.
'Through the pass I several times observed a small white and yellow
flower in patches. I lost it as we advanced, and yet I should think
it must have followed the stream. If it be, as I think, but I did not
observe it with much attention, the flower of the mountain arnica, I
know a preparation from that shrub which has a marvellous action on the
nervous system.'
'I am sure it is the mountain arnica, and I am sure it will cure him,'
said Fakredeen.
'Time presses,' said Eva to Baroni. 'Call my I maidens to our aid; and
first of all let us examine the borders of the stream.'
While his friends departed to exert themselves, Fakredeen remained
behind, and passed his time partly in watching Tancred, partly in
weeping, and partly in calculating the amount of his debts. This
latter was a frequent, and to him inexhaustible, source of interest and
excitement. His creative brain was soon lost in reverie. He conjured up
Tancred restored to health, a devoted friendship between them, immense
plans, not inferior achievements, and inexhaustible resources. Then,
when he remembered that he was himself the cause of the peril of that
precious life on which all his future happiness and success were to
depend, he cursed himself. Involved as were the circumstances in which
he habitually found himself entangled, the present complication was
certainly not inferior to any of the perplexities which he had hitherto
experienced.
He was to become the bosom friend of a being whom he had successfully
plotted to make a prisoner and plunder, and whose life was consequently
endangered; he had to prevail on Amalek to relinquish the ransom which
had induced the great Sheikh to quit his Syrian pastures, and had cost
the lives of some of his most valuable followers; while, on the other
hand, the new moon was rapidly approaching, when the young Emir had
appointed to meet Scheriff Effendi at Gaza, to receive the arms and
munitions which were to raise him to empire, and for which he had
purposed to pay by a portion of his share in the great plunder which
he had himself projected. His baffled brain whirled with wild and
impracticable combinations, till, at length, frightened and exhausted,
he called for his nargileh, and sought, as was his custom, serenity
from its magic tube. In this wise more than three hours had elapsed,
the young Emir was himself again, and was calculating the average of the
various rates of interest in every town in Syria, from Gaza to Aleppo,
when Baroni returned, bearing in his hand an Egyptian vase.
'You have found the magic flowers?' asked Fakredeen, eagerly.
'The flowers of arnica, noble Emir, of which the Lady Eva spoke. I wish
the potion had been made in the new moon; however, it has been blessed.
Two things alone now are wanting, that my lord should drink it, and that
it should cure him.'
It was not yet noon when Tancred quaffed the potion. He took it without
difficulty, though apparently unconscious of the act. As the sun reached
its meridian height, Tancred sank into a profound slumber. Fakredeen
rushed away to tell Eva, who had now retired into the innermost
apartments of the pavilion of Amalek; Baroni never quitted the tent of
his lord. The sun set; the same beautiful rosy tint suffused the tombs
and temples of the city as on the evening of their first forced arrival:
still Tancred slept. The camels returned from the river, the lights
began to sparkle in the circle of black tents: still Tancred slept. He
slept during the day, and he slept during the twilight, and, when the
night came, still Tancred slept. The silver lamp, fed by the oil of the
palm tree, threw its delicate white light over the couch on which he
rested. Mute, but ever vigilant, Fakredeen and Baroni gazed on their
friend and master: still Tancred slept.
It seemed a night that would never end, and, when the first beam of the
morning came, the Emir and his companion mutually recognised on their
respective countenances an expression of distrust, even of terror. Still
Tancred slept; in the same posture and with the same expression, unmoved
and pale. Was it, indeed, sleep? Baroni touched his wrist, but could
find no pulse; Fakredeen held his bright dagger over the mouth, yet its
brilliancy was not for a moment clouded. But he was not cold.
The brow of Baroni was knit with deep thought, and his searching eye
fixed upon the recumbent form; Fakredeen, frightened, ran away to Eva.
'I am frightened, because you are frightened,' said Fakredeen, 'whom
nothing ever alarms. O Rose of Sharon! why are you so pale?'
'It is a stain upon our tents if this youth be lost,' said Eva in a low
voice, yet attempting to speak with calmness.
'But what is it on me!' exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly. 'A stain! I
shall be branded like Cain. No, I will never enter Damascus again, or
any of the cities of the coast. I will give up all my castles to my
cousin Francis El Kazin, on condition that he does not pay my creditors.
I will retire to Mar Hanna. I will look upon man no more.'
'Be calm, my Fakredeen; there is yet hope; my responsibility at this
moment is surely not lighter than yours.'
'Ah! you did not know him, Eva!' exclaimed Fakredeen, passionately; 'you
never listened to him! He cannot be to you what he is to me. I loved
him!'
She pressed her finger to her lips, for they had arrived at the tent of
Tancred. The young Emir, drying his streaming eyes, entered first, and
then came back and ushered in Eva. They stood together by the couch of
Tancred. The expression of distress, of suffering, of extreme tension,
which had not marred, but which, at least, had mingled with the
spiritual character of his countenance the previous day, had
disappeared. If it were death, it was at least beautiful. Softness and
repose suffused his features, and his brow looked as if it had been the
temple of an immortal spirit.
Eva gazed upon the form with a fond, deep melancholy; Fakredeen and
Baroni exchanged glances. Suddenly Tancred moved, heaved a deep sigh,
and opened his dark eyes. The unnatural fire which had yesterday lit
them up had fled. Calmly and thoughtfully he surveyed those around him,
and then he said, 'The Lady of Bethany!'
CHAPTER XXXVI.
_The Angel's Message_
BETWEEN the Egyptian and the Arabian deserts, formed by two gulfs of the
Erythraean Sea, is a peninsula of granite mountains. It seems as if an
ocean of lava, when its waves were literally running mountains high, had
been suddenly commanded to stand still. These successive summits, with
their peaks and pinnacles, enclose a series of valleys, in general stern
and savage, yet some of which are not devoid of pastoral beauty. There
may be found brooks of silver brightness, and occasionally groves of
palms and gardens of dates, while the neighbouring heights command
sublime landscapes, the opposing mountains of Asia and Afric, and the
blue bosom of two seas. On one of these elevations, more than five
thousand feet above the ocean, is a convent; again, nearly three
thousand feet above this convent, is a towering peak, and this is Mount
Sinai.
On the top of Mount Sinai are two ruins, a Christian church and a
Mahometan mosque. In this, the sublimest scene of Arabian glory, Israel
and Ishmael alike raised their altars to the great God of Abraham.
Why are they in ruins? Is it that human structures are not to be endured
amid the awful temples of nature and revelation; and that the column and
the cupola crumble into nothingness in sight of the hallowed Horeb and
on the soil of the eternal Sinai?
Ascending the mountain, about half way between the convent and the
utmost height of the towering peak, is a small plain surrounded by
rocks. In its centre are a cypress tree and a fountain. This is the
traditional scene of the greatest event of time.
Tis night; a solitary pilgrim, long kneeling on the sacred soil, slowly
raises his agitated glance to the starry vault of Araby, and, clasping
his hands in the anguish of devotion, thus prays:--
'O Lord God of Israel, Creator of the Universe, ineffable Jehovah! a
child of Christendom, I come to thine ancient Arabian altars to pour
forth the heart of tortured Europe. Why art thou silent? Why no longer
do the messages of thy renovating will descend on earth? Faith fades and
duty dies. A profound melancholy has fallen on the spirit of man. The
priest doubts, the monarch cannot rule, the multitude moans and toils,
and calls in its frenzy upon unknown gods. If this transfigured mount
may not again behold Thee; if not again, upon thy sacred Syrian plains,
Divinity may teach and solace men; if prophets may not rise again to
herald hope; at least, of all the starry messengers that guard thy
throne, let one appear, to save thy creatures from a terrible despair!'
[Illustration: page2-157]
A dimness suffused the stars of Arabia; the surrounding heights, that
had risen sharp and black in the clear purple air, blended in shadowy
and fleeting masses, the huge branches of the cypress tree seemed to
stir, and the kneeling pilgrim sank upon the earth senseless and in a
trance.
And there appeared to him a form; a shape that should be human, but vast
as the surrounding hills. Yet such was the symmetry of the vision that
the visionary felt his littleness rather than the colossal proportions
of the apparition. It was the semblance of one who, though not young,
was still untouched by time; a countenance like an oriental night, dark
yet lustrous, mystical yet clear. Thought, rather than melancholy,
spoke from the pensive passion of his eyes, while on his lofty forehead
glittered a star that threw a solemn radiance on the repose of his
majestic features.
'Child of Christendom,' said the mighty form, as he seemed slowly to
wave a sceptre fashioned like a palm tree, 'I am the angel of Arabia,
the guardian spirit of that land which governs the world; for power is
neither the sword nor the shield, for these pass away, but ideas, which
are divine. The thoughts of all lands come from a higher source than
man, but the intellect of Arabia comes from the Most High. Therefore
it is that from this spot issue the principles which regulate the human
destiny.
'That Christendom which thou hast quitted, and over whose expiring
attributes thou art a mourner, was a savage forest while the cedars of
Lebanon, for countless ages, had built the palaces of mighty kings.
Yet in that forest brooded infinite races that were to spread over the
globe, and give a new impulse to its ancient life. It was decreed that,
when they burst from their wild woods, the Arabian principles should
meet them on the threshold of the old world to guide and to civilise
them. All had been prepared. The Caesars had conquered the world to place
the Laws of Sinai on the throne of the Capitol, and a Galilean Arab
advanced and traced on the front of the rude conquerors of the Caesars
the subduing symbol of the last development of Arabian principles.
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