owing that they
had no voice to-night, and that it was impossible at all times to sing
except in a chamber.

'For my part,' said Hillel Besso, with an extremely piquant air, 'music
in a chamber is very charming, but I think also in the open air it is
not so bad.'

Tancred took advantage of this movement to approach Eva, who was
conversing, as they took their evening walk, with the soft-eyed
sister of Hillel and Madame Nassim Farhi; a group of women that the
drawing-rooms of Europe and the harems of Asia could perhaps not have
rivalled.

'The Mesdemoiselles Laurella are very accomplished,' said Tancred,
'but at Damascus I am not content to hear anything but sackbuts and
psalteries.'

'But in Europe your finest music is on the subjects of our history,'
said Eva.

'Naturally,' said Tancred, 'music alone can do justice to such themes.
They baffle the uninspired pen.'

'There is a prayer which the Mesdemoiselles Laurella once sang, a prayer
of Moses in Egypt,' said Madame Nassim, somewhat timidly. 'It is very
fine.'

'I wish they would favour us with it,' said Eva; 'I will ask Hillel to
request that kindness;' and she beckoned to Hillel, who sauntered toward
her, and listened to her whispered wish with a smile of supercilious
complacency.

'At present they are going to favour us with Don Pasquale,' he said,
shrugging his shoulders. 'A prayer is a very fine thing, but for my
part, at this hour, I think a serenade is not so bad.'

'And how do you like my father?' said Eva to Tancred in a hesitating
tone, and yet with a glance of blended curiosity and pride.

'He is exactly what Sidonia prepared me for; worthy not only of being
your father, but the father of mankind.'

'The Moslemin say that we are near paradise at Damascus,' said Madame
Nassim, 'and that Adam was fashioned out of our red earth.'

'He much wished to see you,' said Eva, 'and your meeting is as
unexpected as to him it is agreeable.'

'We ought to have met long before,' said Tancred. 'When I first arrived
at Jerusalem, I ought to have hastened to his threshold. The fault and
the misfortune were mine. I scarcely deserved the happiness of knowing
you.'

'I am happy we have all met, and that you now understand us a little.
When you go back to England, you will defend us when we are defamed? You
will not let them persecute us, as they did a few years back, because
they said we crucified their children at the feast of our passover?'

'I shall not