Intrigue! Why, England won India by intrigue. Do you think they are not
intriguing in the Punjaub at this moment? Intrigue has gained half the
thrones of Europe: Greece, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Russia. If
you wish to produce a result, you must make combinations; and you call
combinations, Eva, intrigue!'
'And this is the scrape that you are in,' said the lady. 'I do not see
how I can help you out of it.'
'Pardon; this is not the scrape: and here comes the point on which I
need your aid, daughter of a thousand sheikhs! I can extricate myself
from the Paris disaster, even turn it to account. I have made an
alliance with the patriarch of the Lebanon, who manages affairs for the
Emir Bescheer. The patriarch hates Murad, whom you see I was to have
made patriarch. I am to declare the Archbishop an unauthorised agent,
an adventurer, and my letter to be a forgery. The patriarch is to go
to Stamboul, with his long white beard, and put me right with France,
through De Bourqueney, with whom he has relations in favour of the Emir
Bescheer; my uncle is to be thrown over; all the Maronite chiefs are
to sign a declaration supplicating the Porte to institute me; nay, the
declaration is signed----'
'And the Druses? Will not this Maronite manifestation put you wrong with
the Druses?'
'I live among the Druses, you see,' said Fakredeen, shaking his head,
and looking with his glittering eye a thousand meanings.
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