ful, queenly, impassioned, and eloquent, surrounded by the
accessories that influence the imagination, and invested with
fascinating mystery, Fakredeen, silent and enchanted, had yielded his
spirit to Astarte, even before she revealed to his unaccustomed and
astonished mind the godlike forms of her antique theogony. Eva and
Tancred had talked to him of gods; Astarte had shown them to him. All
visible images of their boasted divinities of Sinai and of Calvary with
which he was acquainted were enshrined over the altars of the convents
of Lebanon. He contrasted those representations without beauty or grace,
so mean, and mournful, and spiritless, or if endued with attributes of
power, more menacing than majestic, and morose rather than sublime, with
those shapes of symmetry, those visages of immortal beauty, serene
yet full of sentiment, on which he had gazed that morning with a holy
rapture. The Queen had said that, besides Mount Sinai and Mount
Calvary, there was also Mount Olympus. It was true; even Tancred had
not challenged her assertion. And the legends of Olympus were as old as,
nay, older than, those of the convent or the mosques.

This was no mythic fantasy of the beautiful Astarte; the fond tradition
of a family, a race, even a nation. These were not the gods merely of
the mountains: they had been, as they deserved to be, the gods of a
great world, of great nations, and of great men. They were the gods of
Alexander and of Caius Julius; they were the gods under whose divine
administration Asia had been powerful, rich, luxurious and happy. They
were the gods who had covered the coasts and plains with magnificent
cities, crowded the midland ocean with golden galleys, and filled the
provinces that were now a chain of wilderness and desert with teeming
and thriving millions. No wonder the Ansarey were faithful to such
deities. The marvel was why men should ever have deserted them. But
man had deserted them, and man was unhappy. All, Eva, Tancred, his own
consciousness, the surrounding spectacles of his life, assured him that
man was unhappy, degraded, or discontented; at all events, miserable. He
was not surprised that a Syrian should be unhappy, even a Syrian prince,
for he had no career; he was not surprised that the Jews were unhappy,
because they were the most persecuted of the human race, and in all
probability, very justly so, for such an exception as Eva proved
nothing; but here was an Englishman, young, noble, v