It was true; even Tancred had
not challenged her assertion. And the legends of Olympus were as old as,
nay, older than, those of the convent or the mosques.
This was no mythic fantasy of the beautiful Astarte; the fond tradition
of a family, a race, even a nation. These were not the gods merely of
the mountains: they had been, as they deserved to be, the gods of a
great world, of great nations, and of great men. They were the gods of
Alexander and of Caius Julius; they were the gods under whose divine
administration Asia had been powerful, rich, luxurious and happy. They
were the gods who had covered the coasts and plains with magnificent
cities, crowded the midland ocean with golden galleys, and filled the
provinces that were now a chain of wilderness and desert with teeming
and thriving millions. No wonder the Ansarey were faithful to such
deities. The marvel was why men should ever have deserted them. But
man had deserted them, and man was unhappy. All, Eva, Tancred, his own
consciousness, the surrounding spectacles of his life, assured him that
man was unhappy, degraded, or discontented; at all events, miserable. He
was not surprised that a Syrian should be unhappy, even a Syrian prince,
for he had no career; he was not surprised that the Jews were unhappy,
because they were the most persecuted of the human race, and in all
probability, very justly so, for such an exception as Eva proved
nothing; but here was an Englishman, young, noble, very rich, with every
advantage of nature and fortune, and he had come out to Syria to tell
them that all Europe was as miserable as themselves.
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