The minds of these functionaries were found to be much perturbed, owing to the reports which had been spread as to the intentions of the new government, and it was sometimes a long business to reassure them. Curiously enough, the worst and most malevolent of the mischief-makers were the Jews whose families had been settled in the larger towns for two or more generations. Supported in idleness by means of the Chalukah--a kind of voluntary tax which the Jews throughout the world imposed on themselves for the benefit of their poor brethren in Palestine--these men, quite naturally, were fully satisfied with the present. The prospect of a future in which their pretensions would be examined and their privileges curtailed was not enticing. Hard work in stubborn soil, even on land which was their own, would be a poor exchange for ease and idleness, and these degenerate Israelites did their best to avert it by inciting the Moslems to resist the change of rule. Calumny after calumny was brought forward by the local authorities, and refuted by Cyril, who made his way to the hardest hearts by dint of a judicious combination of _bonhomie_ and _bakhshish_. It is true that the natives, having seen the colour of his money, and heard of the liberty and other blessings in store for them, chose to ignore the existence of the Jewish State altogether. However, since they accepted all Cyril’s suggestions, and agreed to pay their taxes to the officials whom he should appoint, their belief that England was about to take possession of the country, and had sent him in advance as her representative, mattered little. Owing to the singular success of his labours, Count Mortimer’s journey through the country bore the aspect of a triumphal progress. When he arrived at length at Damascus, there remained only the Beni Ismail and their Desert Queen to be placated before he could announce that the whole Moslem population of Palestine was well affected towards the new rule. To gain the goodwill of the Christians was a hopeless task, he knew; but at this moment they were all fully occupied in intriguing, with the support of the consuls of the Powers who protected them respectively, for the aggrandisement of their property or prestige at the expense of rival sects. Even Bishop Philaret had forgotten the iniquities of the Jews for a time, and was so hotly engaged in a controversy with the Latins over a piece of ground some seven feet square, in which a ruined cistern (which he imagined to be a tomb) had been discovered, that he had no leisure to waste in attacking Cyril.