Raffaelle himself could
not have designed a brow of more delicate supremacy. Her lofty but
gracious bearing, the vigour of her clear, frank mind, her earnestness,
free from all ecstasy and flimsy enthusiasm, but founded in knowledge
and deep thought, and ever sustained by exact expression and ready
argument, her sweet witty voice, the great and all-engaging theme on
which she was so content to discourse, and which seemed by right to
belong to her: all these were circumstances which wonderfully affected
the imagination of Tancred.
He was lost in the empyrean of high abstraction, his gaze apparently
fixed on the purple mountains, and the golden skies, and the glittering
orbs of coming night, which yet in truth he never saw, when a repeated
shout at length roused him. It bade him stand aside on the narrow path
that winds round the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem to Bethany, and let
a coming horseman pass. The horseman was the young Emir who was a guest
the night before in the divan of Besso. Though habited in the Mamlouk
dress, as if only the attendant of some great man, huge trousers and
jacket of crimson cloth, a white turban, a shawl round his waist holding
his pistols and sabre, the horse he rode was a Kochlani of the highest
breed.
Pages:
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295