What if their
misery had been caused by their deserting those divinities who had once
made them so happy?
A great question; Fakredeen indulged in endless combinations while he
smoked countless nargilehs. If religion were to cure the world, suppose
they tried this ancient and once popular faith, so very popular in
Syria. The Queen of the Ansarey could command five-and-twenty thousand
approved warriors, and the Emir of the Lebanon could summon a host,
if not as disciplined, far more numerous. Fakredeen, in a frenzy
of reverie, became each moment more practical. Asian supremacy,
cosmopolitan regeneration, and theocratic equality, all gradually
disappeared. An independent Syrian kingdom, framed and guarded by a
hundred thousand sabres, rose up before him; an established Olympian
religion, which the Druses, at his instigation, would embrace, and
toleration for the Maronites till he could bribe Bishop Nicodemus to
arrange a general conformity, and convert his great principal from the
Patriarch into the Pontiff of Antioch. The Jews might remain,
provided they negotiated a loan which should consolidate the Olympian
institutions and establish the Gentile dynasty of Fakredeen and Astarte.
CHAPTER LIV.
_Astarte is Jealous_
WHEN Fakredeen bade Tancred as usual good-night, his voice was different
from its accustomed tones; he had replied to Tancred with asperity
several times during the evening; and when he was separated from his
companion, he felt relieved.
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