"The one silk-reeling factory of the village, I did not care to visit; for truly I can not tolerate the smell of asphyxiated larvas and boiling cocoons. 'But the proprietor,' quoth mine host, 'is very honourable, and of a fine wit.' As honourable as a sweater can be, I thought. No, no; these manufacturers are all of a piece. I know personally one of them, who is a Scrooge, and of the vilest. I watched him one day buying cocoons from the peasants. He does not trust any of his employees at the scales; they do not know how to press their hand over the weights in the pan. Ay, that little pressure of his chubby hand on the weights makes a difference in his favour of more than ten per cent. of what he buys. That little pressure of his hand is five or six piasters out of the peasant's pocket, who, with five or six piasters, remember, can satisfy his hunger on bread and olives and pulverised thyme, for five or six days. So, we visit not the cocoon-man, about whom the priest of his private chapel--he prays at home like the Lebanon Amirs of old, this khawaja--tells me many edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean. For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great khawaja, when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his paunch and double chin and ruddy cheeks seemed to illustrate what the priest told me about his usurious propensities. "What a contrast between him and the swarthy, leathery, hungry-looking potters. I can not think that Nature has aught to do with these naked inequalities. I can not believe that, to produce one roseate complexion, she must etiolate a thousand. I can not see how, in drinking from the same gushing spring, and breathing the same mountain air, and basking in the same ardent sun, the khawaja gets a double chin and the peasant a double curse. But his collops and his ruddiness are due to the fact that he misgoverns as well as his Pasha and his Sultan. He battens, even like a Tammany chief, on political jobbery, on extortion, on usury. His tree is better manured, so to speak; manured by the widows and tended by the orphans of his little kingdom. In a word, this great khawaja is what I call a political coprophagist. Hence, his suspicious growth, his lustre and lustiness.