s, or, in a tone of levity approaching to jesting, pour
forth garrulous secret history with which everyone is acquainted, and
never say a single thing which is new that is not coolly invented for
the occasion.

The princes of the Houses of Shehaab, Kais, and Assaad, and Abdullah,
the Habeish and the Eldadah, the great Houses of the Druses, the
Djinblat and the Yezbek, the Abuneked, the Talhook, and the Abdel-Malek,
were not of this school. Silently, determinedly, unceasing, unsatiated,
they proceeded with the great enterprise on which they had embarked. If
the two nations were indeed to be united, and form a great whole
under the sceptre of a Shehaab, let not this banquet pass like the
hypocritical hospitality of ordinary life, where men offer what they
desire not to be accepted by those who have no wish to receive. This, on
the contrary, was a real repast, a thing to be remembered. Practice
made the guests accustomed to the porcelain of Paris and the goblets of
Prague. Many was the goodly slice of wild boar, succeeded by the
rich flesh of the gazelle, of which they disposed. There were also
wood-pigeons, partridges, which the falconers had brought down, and
quails from the wilderness. At length they called again for rice, a
custom which intimated that their appetite for meat was satisfied, and
immediately Nubian slaves covered them with towels of fine linen fringed
with gold, and, while they held their hands over the basin, poured sweet
waters from the ewer.

In the meantime, Butros Keramy opened his heart to Rafael Farah.

'I begin,' said Butros, quaffing a cup of the Vino d'Oro, 'to believe in
nationality.'

'It cannot be denied,' said Rafael Farah, judiciously shaking his head,
'that the two nations were once under the same prince. If the great
powers would agree to a Shehaab, and we could sometimes meet together in
the present fashion, there is no saying, prejudices might wear off.'

'Shall it ever be said that I am of the same nation as Hamood Abuneked?'
said Butros.

'Ah! it is very dreadful,' said Rafael; 'a man who has burned convents!'

'And who has five hundred Maronite horns in his castle,' said Butros.

'But suppose he restores them?' said Francis El Kazin.

'That would make a difference,' said Rafael Farah.

'There can be no difference while he lives,' said Butros.

'I fear 'tis an affair of blood,' said Rafael Farah.

'Taking horns was never an affair of blood,' said Francis El Kazin.

'Wha