Could you believe it, but I was told yesterday at Deir el
Kamar, that the English consul has persuaded the Queen that even the
patriarch was against the Shehaabs?'
'Is it possible?' said Rafael Farah, a Maronite of the House
of Eldadah. 'It must be the Druses who circulate these enormous
falsehoods.'
'Hush!' said Young Syria, in the shape of Francis El Kazin, 'there is no
longer Maronite or Druse: we are all Syrians, we are brothers.'
'Then a good many of my brothers are sons of Eblis,' said Butros Keramy.
'I hope he is not my father.'
'Truly, I should like to see the mountain without the Maronite nation,'
said Rafael Farah. 'That would be a year without rain.'
'And mighty things your Maronite nation has done!' rejoined Francis El
Kazin. 'If there had been the Syrian nation instead of the Maronite
nation, and the Druse nation, and half a dozen other nations besides,
instead of being conquered by Egypt in 1832, we should have conquered
Egypt ourselves long ago, and have held it for our farm. We have done
mighty things truly with our Maronite nation!'
'To hear an El Kazin speak against the Maronite nation!' exclaimed
Rafael Farah, with a look of horror; 'a natipn that has two hundred
convents!'
'And a patriarch,' said Butros Keramy, 'very much respected even by the
Pope of Rome.
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