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In 1843 appeared that marvellous drama The Return of the Druses, a work which contains more of Browning's typical qualities exhibited in an exquisite literary shape, than can easily be counted.
The plain is occupied by the Spahis, the finest, smartest horsemen of the whole host; along the sea-front are ranged the topidjis, with their rows and rows of cannons. Other detachments of these gunners are distributed among the various hillocks. On the wings of the host are placed the Albanian cavalry, the Tartars, and the Druses of Horan.
Did a Druse ever turn his cheek to be smitten? You know what the Druses are. I am a Druse still. I will not talk longer, I have nothing to say to you all except that you must take me back to my father, and I will see that he forgives you.
The visits they received from the Druses caused us much uneasiness, as we apprehended an attack from their body to plunder not only us, but all Jews in the town; and we should have proceeded early the next morning to Tiberias had we not feared such a course would give the appearance of flight.
These ill-disciplined troops are assembled every where, in order that they may be ready to attack whenever a disturbance occurs between the Druses and Maronites. I consider, however, that the Arnauts are much more to be feared than either the Druses or the Maronites, through whose territories we afterwards journeyed without experiencing, in a single instance, either insult or injury.
Cypros feared that the presence of the two guests of her mistress might prove an obstacle to the fulfilment of this wish, as the freedom of social intercourse that prevailed among the Ansarey was unknown even among the ever-veiled women of the Maronites and Druses.
'In the evening she sent for me; she smoked the chiboque, her mind was wrought to a high pitch of enthusiasm, she talked wildly and was much distressed in mind, in short her intellects were much disordered and it was very distressing. 'However, she arranged that I should next morning start for Deir-el- Kamr, the capital of the Druses, with a letter to the Emir Bashire, the prince of that nation.
This is readily found, but is no distinction; its reaction before the blowpipe, however, is characteristic, it readily fusing to a transparent globule, clear and glassy, and by forming a jelly when heated with acids. The bed holding the upright crystals is also natrolite in confused matted masses. This mineral has also been found in other parts of the shaft, but only in small druses.
Over against these devotees of the ideal Browning sets his worldlings, ranging from creatures as despicable as the courtiers of Duchess Colombe to such men of power and inexhaustible resource as the Nuncio who confronts Djabal with his Druses, or the Papal Legate whose easier and half-humorous task is to dismiss to his private affairs at Lugo the four-and-twentieth leader of revolt.
The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, the Governor or Jerusalem, the Governor of Phoenicia, the Chief Officials of the Government, the Consuls of the various countries, resident in Haifa, the heads of the various religious communities, the notables of Palestine, Jews, Christians, Moslems, Druses, Egyptians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, and a host of his American, European and native friends, men, women and children, both of high and low degree ... all, about ten thousand in number, mourning the loss of their Beloved One....
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