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Updated: June 14, 2025
One Peter Benzo de Millano, which was fourtene yeres in those partes, writeth, that they holde greate townes, some with tenne, some with sixe, some with foure, and some with twoo souldiers, and that they commaunded that all the Italians, whome they called Levantines in contempte, shoulde departe those contries, fearinge they shoulde reveale their nakednes to the worlde, and encourage others to sett in footinge there.
It is a frightful theft, an audacious libel. My fortune is mine, my own. I made it by my trade as a merchant. I had Ahmed's favour; he gave me the opportunity of becoming rich. It is possible I may have put on the screw a little tightly sometimes. But one must not judge these things from a European standpoint. Over there, the enormous profits the Levantines make is an accepted fact a known thing.
In that touch there was true hospitality. Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or rather, I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and commonly called Levantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the Desert I had been so long alone, that the prospect of speaking to somebody at Cairo seemed almost a new excitement.
On the wharves swarmed all kinds of Mediterranean men, Greeks from the continent and from the islands, Levantines from the coast of Asia, Spaniards, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians. Many had kept their original costume and to this varied picturesque garb was united a diversity of tongues, some of them mysterious and well-nigh extinct.
In fact, the moderns have failed where their predecessors treated the stuff so well that Levantines imported silks to resell them in Italy. Formerly Tenerife contained a manufactory whose lasting and brilliant produce was highly appreciated in Spain as in Havana. At Palma crimson waist-sashes used to sell for an ounce of gold.
Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the Turkish crowd Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled with this exotic element, a whole variegated Parisian Bohemia of ruined nobleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a beacon.
Of enormous size, bloated to such a degree that it was impossible to assign to her any particular age between twenty-five and forty, with a rather pretty face but grown shapeless in its features, dull eyes beneath lids that drooped, vulgarly dressed in foreign clothes, laden with diamonds and jewels after the fashion of a Hindu idol, she was as fine a sample as could be found of those transplanted European women called Levantines a curious race of obese creoles whom speech and costume alone attach to our world, but whom the East wraps round with its stupefying atmosphere, with the subtle poisons of its drugged air in which everything, from the tissues of the skin to the waists of garments, even to the soul, is enervated and relaxed.
They had gone too far to draw back, but they resolved to make the value of their good-will, of their sacrificed prejudices, felt, and the Baroness Marie well understood the shade of meaning in the protecting tone of the Levantines, treating her as "My dear child," "My dear good girl," with an almost contemptuous pride.
Further experience taught me that he was a very fair representative of public opinion among a large class of Syrian Christians. He was an ardent desirer of French domination, and entertained the most stupid prejudices against the English. I generally found that the Levantines preferred the French, whilst we are great favorites with the Arabs. Two Years in a Levantine Family.
Below, now in the palace, now in the defences, his master, the Saadat, planned for the last day's effort on the morrow, gave directions to the officers, sent commands to Achmet Pasha, arranged for the disposition of his forces, with as strange a band of adherents and subordinates as ever men had adventurers, to whom adventure in their own land had brought no profit; members of that legion of the non-reputable, to whom Cairo offered no home; Levantines, who had fled from that underground world where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm of the world's disapproval.
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