‘A Shehaab will look after the main chance,’ said Baroni. ‘But his main chance may be the salvation of his country,’ said Tancred. ‘Nothing can save his country,’ said Baroni. ‘The Syrians were ever slaves.’ ‘I do not call them slaves now,’ said Tancred; ‘why, they are armed and are warlike! All that they want is a cause.’ ‘And that they never will have,’ said Baroni. ‘Why?’ ‘The East is used up.’ ‘It is not more used up than when Mahomet arose,’ said Tancred. ‘Weak and withering as may be the government of the Turks, it is not more feeble and enervated than that of the Greek empire and the Chosroes.’ ‘I don’t know anything about them,’ replied Baroni; ‘but I know there is nothing to be done with the people here. I have seen something of them,’ said Baroni. ‘M. de Sidonia tried to do something in ‘39, and, if there had been a spark of spirit or of sense in Syria, that was the time, but----’ and here Baroni shrugged his shoulders. ‘But what was your principle of action in ‘39?’ inquired Tancred, evidently interested. ‘The only principle of action in this world,’ said Baroni; ‘we had plenty of money; we might have had three millions.’ ‘And if you had had six, or sixteen, your efforts would have been equally fruitless. I do not believe in national regeneration in the shape of a foreign loan. Look at Greece! And yet a man might climb Mount Carmel, and utter three words which would bring the Arabs again to Grenada, and perhaps further.’ ‘They have no artillery,’ said Baroni. ‘And the Turks have artillery and cannot use it,’ said Lord Montacute. ‘Why, the most favoured part of the globe at this moment is entirely defenceless; there is not a soldier worth firing at in Asia except the Sepoys. The Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian monarchies might be gained in a morning with faith and the flourish of a sabre.’ ‘You would have the Great Powers interfering,’ said Baroni. ‘What should I care for the Great Powers, if the Lord of Hosts were on my side!’ ‘Why, to be sure they could not do much at Bagdad or Ispahan.’ ‘Work out a great religious truth on the Persian and Mesopotamian plains, the most exuberant soils in the world with the scantiest population,--it would revivify Asia. It must spread. The peninsula of Arabia, when in action, must always command the peninsula of the Lesser Asia. Asia revivified would act upon Europe. The European comfort, which they call civilisation, is, after all, confined to a very small space: the island of Great Britain, France, and the course of a single river, the Rhine. The greater part of Europe is as dead as Asia, without the consolation of climate and the influence of immortal traditions.’