The credulous air of Syria was favourable to the great mystification in
which Lord Montacute was an unconscious agent. It was as fully believed
in the mountain, by all the Habeishes and the Eldadahs, the Kazins and
the Elvasuds, the Elheires, and the Hai-dars, great Maronite families,
as well as by the Druse Djinblats and their rivals, the House of
Yezbeck, or the House of Talhook, or the House of Abuneked, that the
brother of the Queen of England was a guest at Canobia as it was in the
stony wilderness of Petrsea. Ahmet Raslan the Druse and Butros Kerauney
the Maronite, who agreed upon no other point, were resolved on this. And
was it wonderful, for Butros had already received privately two hundred
muskets since the arrival of Tancred, and Raslan had been promised in
confidence a slice of the impending English loan by Fakredeen?
The extraordinary attention, almost homage, which the Emir paid his
guest entirely authorised these convictions, although they could justify
no suspicion on the part of Tancred. The natural simplicity of his
manners, indeed, and his constitutional reserve, recoiled from the state
and ceremony with which he found himself frequently surrounded and too
often treated; but Fakredeen peremptorily stopped his remonstrances by
assuring him that it was the custom of the country, and that every one
present would be offended if a guest of distinction were not entertained
with this extreme respect.
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