ery rich, with every
advantage of nature and fortune, and he had come out to Syria to tell
them that all Europe was as miserable as themselves. What if their
misery had been caused by their deserting those divinities who had once
made them so happy?

A great question; Fakredeen indulged in endless combinations while he
smoked countless nargilehs. If religion were to cure the world, suppose
they tried this ancient and once popular faith, so very popular in
Syria. The Queen of the Ansarey could command five-and-twenty thousand
approved warriors, and the Emir of the Lebanon could summon a host,
if not as disciplined, far more numerous. Fakredeen, in a frenzy
of reverie, became each moment more practical. Asian supremacy,
cosmopolitan regeneration, and theocratic equality, all gradually
disappeared. An independent Syrian kingdom, framed and guarded by a
hundred thousand sabres, rose up before him; an established Olympian
religion, which the Druses, at his instigation, would embrace, and
toleration for the Maronites till he could bribe Bishop Nicodemus to
arrange a general conformity, and convert his great principal from the
Patriarch into the Pontiff of Antioch. The Jews might remain,
provided they negotiated a loan which should consolidate the Olympian
institutions and establish the Gentile dynasty of Fakredeen and Astarte.

CHAPTER LIV.

_Astarte is Jealous_

WHEN Fakredeen bade Tancred as usual good-night, his voice was different
from its accustomed tones; he had replied to Tancred with asperity
several times during the evening; and when he was separated from his
companion, he felt relieved. All unconscious of these changes and
symptoms was the heir of Bellamont.

Though grave, one indeed who never laughed and seldom smiled, Tancred
was blessed with the rarest of all virtues, a singularly sweet temper.
He was grave, because he was always thinking, and thinking of great
deeds. But his heart was soft, and his nature most kind, and
remarkably regardful of the feelings of others. To wound them, however
unintentionally, would occasion him painful disturbance. Though
naturally rapid in the perception of character, his inexperience of
life, and the self-examination in which he was so frequently absorbed,
tended to blunt a little his observation of others. With a generous
failing, which is not uncommon, he was prepared to give those whom
he loved credit for the virtues which he himself possessed, and the
sentim