The Emir was not a tall man, not more than five feet seven inches or five feet eight inches, as I should judge, in height. In his youth he must have been singularly handsome, and indeed that was his reputation. Now in his old age, and in spite of the little sacrifices to vanity of which I have spoken, he had that rare look of distinction and race which is perhaps never seen so conspicuously as in the highest type of Oriental beauty. His was the figure and expression of a king of men; such must have been the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the judges, the kings of Bible story. His reception of us was the very poetry of good manners. Burton had much conversation with him, for they were good friends. As for me, after exchanging a few commonplace civilities, Burton interpreting, I was content to watch and think, and throw my mind back many years and across the seas to the desert, drawing pictures of the great gathering of its children rallying round the standard of the glorious youth who was to lead them in their vain but noble struggle for faith, independence, and country. Presently our host, who, as a solitary, was eager for news, began to question me about European affairs, and more especially about France, which at that moment was in a state of chaos more terrible than at any other period of the great war. He spoke of his former foes with that generous sympathy and admiration which we might have expected from his chivalrous nature. He even talked of gratitude. In the middle of our conversation he clapped his hands and an attendant appeared, bearing, not as I should have expected, _chibouques_ and coffee—but a cup of fragrant tea; such tea as is drunk in Russia and in China—never in England. When we took our leave he thanked us for our visit, which he courteously said had given him great pleasure; and indeed I think it may have done; for his questions showed a considerable grip of politics and of the convulsion by which the world was being stirred. When he spoke of the war, his eye blazed with the fire of battle, and I could not but feel how dearly even then he would have loved to lead a charge of his white-cloaked warriors against the Prussian Uhlans. He and his sword belonged to the past, his mind was shaped in a mould which the nineteenth century has shivered to atoms and thrown away. I had heard much of Abd el Kader, as I have related elsewhere, from the Duc d’Aumale, that gayest of soldiers and raconteurs, who was never weary of speaking of him with admiration. I could now fully appreciate the sympathy of the European conqueror for his fallen Eastern foe; the Duc d’Aumale, who to his finger-tips felt the poetry of the bivouac fire and the rousing crackle of the trumpet, saw in the great Emir the highest expression of that patriotic spirit of which he himself gave so royal an example.