‘If your government only understood the Eastern question!’ said Mr. Consul-General Laurella, pricking up his ears at some half phrase that he had caught, and addressing Tancred across the table. ‘It is more simple than you imagine, and before you return to England to take your seat in your Parliament, I should be very happy to have some conversation with you. I think I could tell you some things----’ and he gave a glance of diplomatic mystery. Tancred bowed. ‘For my part,’ said Hillel Besso, shrugging his shoulders, and speaking in an airy tone, ‘it seems to me that your Eastern question is a great imbroglio that only exists in the cabinets of diplomatists. Why should there be any Eastern question? All is very well as it is. At least we might be worse: I think we might be worse.’ ‘I am so happy to find myself once more among you,’ whispered Fakredeen to his neighbour, Madame Mourad Farhi. ‘This is my real home.’ ‘All here must be happy and honoured to see you, too, noble Emir.’ ‘And the good Signor Mourad: I am afraid I am not a favourite of his?’ pursued Fakredeen, meditating a loan. ‘I never heard my husband speak of you, noble Emir, but with the greatest consideration.’ ‘There is no man I respect so much,’ said Fakredeen; ‘no one in whom I have such a thorough confidence. Excepting our dear host, who is really my father, there is no one on whose judgment I would so implicitly rely. Tell him all that, my dear Madame Mourad, for I wish him to respect me.’ ‘I admire his hair so much,’ whispered Thérèse Laurella, in an audible voice to her sister, across the broad form of the ever-smiling Madame Picholoroni. ‘Tis such a relief after our dreadful turbans.’ ‘And his costume, so becoming! I wonder how any civilised being can wear the sort of things we see about us. ‘Tis really altogether like a wardrobe of the Comédie.’ ‘Well, Sophonisbe,’ said the sensible Moses Laurella, ‘I admire the Franks very much; they have many qualities which I could wish our Levantines shared; but I confess that I do not think that their strong point is their costume.’ ‘Oh, my dear uncle!’ said Thérèse; ‘look at that beautiful white cravat. What have we like it? So simple, so distinguished! Such good taste! And then the boots. Think of our dreadful slippers! powdered with pearls and all sorts of trash of that kind, by the side of that lovely French polish.’ ‘He must be terribly _ennuyé_ here,’ said Thérèse to Sophonisbe, with a look of the initiated. ‘Indeed, I should think so: no balls, not an opera; I quite pity him. What could have induced him to come here?’ ‘I should think he must be attached to some one,’ said Thérèse: ‘he looks unhappy.’ ‘There is not a person near him with whom he can have an idea in common.’ ‘Except Mr. Hillel Besso,’ said Thérèse. ‘He appears to be quite enlightened. I spoke to him a little before dinner. He has been a winter at Pera, and went to all the balls.’