I could not
withhold my tears: I wept like a child, even like Khalid's mother. I
remember he would often speak of suicide in those days. And on the
evening of that fatal day we spent many hours discussing the question.
'Why is not one free to kill himself,' he finally asked, 'if one is
free to become a Jesuit?' But I did not believe he was in earnest.
Alas, he was. For on the morning of the following day, I went up to
his tent on the roof and found nothing of Khalid's belongings but
a pamphlet on the subject, 'Is Suicide a Sin?' and right under the
title the monosyllable LA (no) and his signature. The frightfulness
of his intention stood like a spectre before me. I clapped one hand
upon the other and wept. I made inquiries in the city and in the
neighbouring places, but to no purpose. Oh, that dreadful, dismal
day, when everywhither I went something seemed to whisper in my
heart, 'Khalid is no more.' It was the first time in my life that I
felt the pangs of separation, the sting of death and sorrow. The
days and months passed, heartlessly confirming my conjecture, my
belief.

"One evening, when the last glimmer of hope passed away, I sat down
and composed a threnody in his memory. And I sent it to one of the
newspapers of Beirut, in the hope that Khalid, if he still lived,
might chance to see it. It was published and quoted by other journals
here and in Egypt, who, in their eulogies, spoke of Khalid as the
young Baalbekian philosopher and poet. One of these newspapers, whose
editor is a dear friend of mine, and of comely ancient virtue, did not
mention, from a subtle sense of tender regard for my feelings, the
fact that Khalid committed suicide. 'He died,' the Notice said, 'of a
sudden and violent defluxion of rheums,[1] which baffled the
physician and resisted his skill and physic.' Another journal, whose
editor's religion is of the Jesuitical pattern, spoke of him as a
miserable God-abandoned wretch who was not entitled to the right of
Christian burial; and fulminated at its contemporaries for eulogising
the youthful infidel and moaning his death, thus spreading and
justifying his evil example.

"And so, the days passed, and the months, and Khalid was still dead.
In the summer of this year, when the Constitution was proclaimed, and
the country was rioting in the saturnalia of Freedom and Equality, my
sorrow was keener, deeper than ever. Not I alone, but the cities and
the deserts of Syria and Arabia, missed my lov