Fakredeen sketched a character in a sentence, and you knew instantly the
individual whom he described without any personal knowledge. Unlike the
Orientals in general, his gestures were as vivid as his words. He acted
the interviews, he achieved the adventures before you. His voice could
take every tone and his countenance every form. In the midst of all
this, bursts of plaintive melancholy; sometimes the anguish of a
sensibility too exquisite, alternating with a devilish mockery and a
fatal absence of all self-respect.
'It appears to me,' said Tancred, when the young Emir had declared his
star accursed, since, after the ceaseless exertions of years, he was
still as distant as ever from the accomplishment of his purpose, 'it
appears to me that your system is essentially erroneous. I do not
believe that anything great is ever effected by management. All this
intrigue, in which you seem such an adept, might be of some service in
a court or in an exclusive senate; but to free a nation you require
something more vigorous and more simple. This system of intrigue in
Europe is quite old-fashioned. It is one of the superstitions left us by
the wretched eighteenth century, a period when aristocracy was rampant
throughout Christendom; and what were the consequences? All faith in God
or man, all grandeur of purpose, all nobility of thought, and all beauty
of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up.
Pages:
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380