ure of his chubby
hand on the weights makes a difference in his favour of more than ten
per cent. of what he buys. That little pressure of his hand is five
or six piasters out of the peasant's pocket, who, with five or six
piasters, remember, can satisfy his hunger on bread and olives and
pulverised thyme, for five or six days. So, we visit not the
cocoon-man, about whom the priest of his private chapel--he prays at
home like the Lebanon Amirs of old, this khawaja--tells me many
edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least
injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the
operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean.
For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces
the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great
khawaja, when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his
paunch and double chin and ruddy cheeks seemed to illustrate what the
priest told me about his usurious propensities.

"What a contrast between him and the swarthy, leathery, hungry-looking
potters. I can not think that Nature has aught to do with these naked
inequalities. I can not believe that, to produce one roseate
complexion, she must etiolate a thousand. I can not see how, in
drinking from the same gushing spring, and breathing the same mountain
air, and basking in the same ardent sun, the khawaja gets a double
chin and the peasant a double curse. But his collops and his ruddiness
are due to the fact that he misgoverns as well as his Pasha and his
Sultan. He battens, even like a Tammany chief, on political jobbery,
on extortion, on usury. His tree is better manured, so to speak;
manured by the widows and tended by the orphans of his little
kingdom. In a word, this great khawaja is what I call a political
coprophagist. Hence, his suspicious growth, his lustre and lustiness.

"But he is not the only example in the village of this superabundance
of health; the priests are many more. For I must not fail to mention
that, in addition to its potteries and founderies, the town is blessed
with a dozen churches. Every family, a sort of tribe, has its church
and priests; and consequently, its feuds with all the others. It is a
marvel how the people, in the lethal soot and smoke of strife and
dissension, can work and produce anything. Farewell, ye swarthy
people! Farewell, O village of bells and potteries! Were it not for
the khawaja who misgovern