e chamber many indications of furniture,
which are far from usual even among the wealthiest and most refined
Orientals: Indian tables, vases of china, and baskets of agate and
porcelain filled with flowers. From one side, the large Saracenic
windows of this saloon, which were not glazed, but covered only when
required by curtains of green and silver silk, now drawn aside, looked
on a garden; vistas of quivering trees, broad parterres of flowers,
and everywhere the gleam of glittering fountains, which owned, however,
fealty to the superior stream that bubbled in the centre of the saloon,
where four negroes, carved in black marble, poured forth its refreshing
waters from huge shells of pearl, into the vast circle of a jasper
basin.

At this moment the chamber was enlivened by the presence of many
individuals. Most of these were guests; one was the master of the
columns and the fountains; a man much above the middle height, though as
well proportioned as his sumptuous hall; admirably handsome, for beauty
and benevolence blended in the majestic countenance of Adam Besso.
To-day his Syrian robes were not unworthy of his palace; the cream-white
shawl that encircled his brow with its ample folds was so fine that the
merchant who brought it to him carried it over the ocean and the desert
in the hollow shell of a pomegranate. In his girdle rested a handjar,
the sheath of which was of a rare and vivid enamel, and the hilt
entirely of brilliants.

A slender man of middle size, who, as he stood by Besso, had a
diminutive appearance, was in earnest conversation with his host. This
personage was adorned with more than one order, and dressed in the Frank
uniform of one of the Great Powers, though his head was shaven, for
he wore a tarboush or red cap, although no turban. This gentleman was
Signor Elias de Laurella, a wealthy Hebrew merchant at Damascus, and
Austrian consul-general _ad honorem_; a great man, almost as celebrated
for his diplomatic as for his mercantile abilities; a gentleman who
understood the Eastern question; looked up to for that, but still more,
in that he was the father of the two prettiest girls in the Levant.

The Mesdemoiselles de Laurella, Therese and Sophonisbe, had just
completed their education, partly at Smyrna, the last year at
Marseilles. This had quite turned their heads; they had come back with a
contempt for Syria, the bitterness of which was only veiled by the high
style of European nonchalance, o