"These and the towels, after taking my bath, I leave at the Hermitage; my waiter minds them for me. And so, I suspect I am happy--if, curse it! I could but breathe better. O, come up to see me. I'll give you a royal dinner at the Hermitage, and a royal bed in the hemlock grove on the river-bank. Do come up, the peace of Allah upon thee. Read my salaam to Im-Hanna." And during his five months in the Bronx he did not sleep five nights within doors, we are told, nor did he once dine out of the Hermitage. Even his hair, a fantastic fatuity behind a push-cart, he did not take the trouble to cut or trim. It must have helped his business. But this constancy, never before sustained to such a degree, must soon cease, having laid up, thanks to his push-cart and the people of the Bronx, enough to carry him, not only to Baalbek, but to _Aymakanenkan_. CHAPTER III THE FALSE DAWN What the Arabs always said of Andalusia, Khalid and Shakib said once of America: a most beautiful country with one single vice--it makes foreigners forget their native land. But now they are both suffering from nostalgia, and America, therefore, is without a single vice. It is perfect, heavenly, ideal. In it one sees only the vices of other races, and the ugliness of other nations. America herself is as lovely as a dimpled babe, and as innocent. A dimpled babe she. But wait until she grows, and she will have more than one vice to demand forgetfulness. Shakib, however, is not going to wait. He begins to hear the call of his own country, now that his bank account is big enough to procure for him the Pashalic of Syria. And Khalid, though his push-cart had developed to a stationary fruit stand,--and perhaps for this very reason,--is now desirous of leaving America anon. He is afraid of success overtaking him. Moreover, the Bronx Park has awakened in him his long dormant love of Nature. For while warming himself on the flames of knowledge in the cellar, or rioting with the Bassarides of Bohemia, or canvassing and speechifying for Tammany, he little thought of what he had deserted in his native country. The ancient historical rivers flowing through a land made sacred by the divine madness of the human spirit; the snow-capped mountains at the feet of which the lily and the oleander bloom; the pine forests diffusing their fragrance even among the downy clouds; the peaceful, sun-swept multi-coloured meadows; the trellised vines, the fig groves, the quince orchards, the orangeries: the absence of these did not disturb his serenity in the cellar, his voluptuousness in Bohemia, his enthusiasm in Tammany Land.