‘There is something most interesting,’ said Tancred, ‘in this idea of a single family issuing from obscurity, and disseminating their genius through the world, charming mankind with so many spells. How fortunate for you all that Sidonia had so much feeling for genius!’ ‘And some feeling for his race,’ said Baroni. ‘How?’ said Tancred, startled. ‘You remember he whispered something in my father’s ear?’ ‘I remember.’ ‘He spoke it in Hebrew, and he was understood.’ ‘You do not mean that you, too, are Jews?’ ‘Pure Sephardim, in nature and in name.’ ‘But your name surely is Italian?’ ‘Good Arabic, my lord. Baroni; that is, the son of Aaron; the name of old clothesmen in London, and of caliphs at Bagdad.’ CHAPTER XLI. _The Mountains of Lebanon_ HOW do you like my forest?’ asked Fakredeen of Tancred, as, while descending a range of the Lebanon, an extensive valley opened before them, covered with oak trees, which clothed also, with their stout trunks, their wide-spreading branches, and their rich starry foliage, the opposite and undulating hills, one of which was crowned with a convent. ‘It is the only oak forest in Syria. It will serve some day to build our fleet.’ At Gaza, which they had reached by easy journeys, for Fakredeen was very considerate of the health of Tancred, whose wound had scarcely healed, and over whom he watched with a delicate solicitude which would have almost become a woman, the companions met Scheriff Effendi. The magic signature of Lord Montacute settled the long-vexed question of the five thousand muskets, and secured also ten thousand piastres for the commander of the escort to deliver to his chief. The children of Rechab, in convoy of the precious charge, certain cases of which were to be delivered to the great Sheikh, and the rest to be deposited in indicated quarters of the Lebanon, here took leave of the Emir and his friend, and pursued their course to the north of Hebron and the Dead Sea, in the direction of the Hauraan, where they counted, if not on overtaking the great Sheikh, at least on the additional security which his neighbourhood would ensure them. Their late companions remained at Gaza, awaiting Tancred’s yacht, which Baroni fetched from the neighbouring Jaffa. A favourable breeze soon carried them from Gaza to Beiroot, where they landed, and where Fakredeen had the political pleasure of exhibiting his new and powerful ally, a prince, an English prince, the brother perhaps of a queen, unquestionably the owner of a splendid yacht, to the admiring eye of all his, at the same time, credulous and rapacious creditors. The air of the mountains invigorated Tancred. His eyes had rested so long on the ocean and the desert, that the effect produced on the nerves by the forms and colours of a more varied nature were alone reviving.