“As you see: I breathe with an effort, and can hardly speak.”
“But the health of the body is nothing compared with the health of the soul.”
“I know that too well, O Reverend” (Ya Muhtaram).
“And one must have recourse to the physician in both instances.”
“I do not believe in physicians, O Reverend.”
“Not even the physician of the soul?”
“You said it, O Reverend.”
The mother of Khalid serves the coffee, and whispers to her son a word. Whereupon Khalid rises and sits on the divan near the Padre.
“But one must follow the religion of one’s father,” the Jesuit resumes.
“When one’s father has a religion, yes; but when he curses the religion of his son for not being ferociously religious like himself—”
“But a father must counsel and guide his children.”
“Let the mother do that. Hers is the purest and most disinterested spirit of the two.”
“Then, why not obey your mother, and—”
Khalid suppresses his anger.
“My mother and I can get along without the interference of our neighbours.”
“Yes, truly. But you will find great solace in going to Church and ceasing your doubts.”
Khalid rises indignant.
“I only doubt the Pharisees, O Reverend, and their Church I would destroy today if I could.”
“My child—”
“Here is your hat, O Reverend, and pardon me—you see, I can hardly speak, I can hardly breathe. Good day.”
And he walks out of the house, leaving Father Farouche to digest his ire at his ease, and to wonder, with his three-cornered hat in hand, at the savage demeanour of the son of their pious porter. “Your son,” addressing the mother as he stands under the door-lintel, “is not only an infidel, but he is also crazy. And for such wretches there is an asylum here and a Jahannam hereafter.”
And the poor mother, her face suffused with tears, prostrates herself before the Virgin, praying, beating her breast, invoking with her tongue and hand and heart; while Farouche returns to his coop to hatch under his three-cornered hat, the famous Jesuit-egg of intrigue. That hat, which can outwit the monk’s hood and the hundred fabled devils under it, that hat, with its many gargoyles, a visible symbol of the leaky conscience of the Jesuit, that hat, O Khalid, which you would have kicked out of your house, has eventually succeeded in ousting you, and will do its mighty best yet to send you to the Bosphorus. Indeed, to serve their purpose, these honest servitors of Jesus will even act as spies to the criminal Government of Abdul Hamid. Read Shakib’s account.
“About a fortnight after Khalid’s banishment from home,” he writes, “a booklet was published in Beirut, setting forth the history of Ignatius Loyola and the purports and intents of Jesuitism. On the cover it was expressly declared that the booklet is translated from the English, and the Jesuits, who are noted for their scholarly attainments, could have discovered this for themselves without the explicit declaration. But they did not deem it necessary to make such a discovery then. It seemed rather imperative to maintain the contrary and try to prove it. Now, Khalid having received a copy of this booklet from a friend in Beirut, reads it and writes back, saying that it is not a translation but a mutilation, rather, of one of Thomas Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets entitled Jesuitism. This letter must have reached them together with Father Farouche’s report on Khalid’s infidelity, just about the time the booklet was circulating in Baalbek. For in the following Number of their Weekly Journal an article, stuffed and padded with execrations and anathema, is published against the book and its anonymous author. From this I quote the following, which is by no means the most erring and most poisonous of their shafts.
“ ‘Such a Pamphlet,’ exclaims the scholarly Jesuit Editor, ‘was never written by Thomas Carlyle, as some here, from ignorance or malice, assert. For that philosopher, of all the thinkers of his day, believed in God and in the divinity of Jesus His Son, and could never descend to these foul and filthy depths. He never soiled his pen in the putrescence of falsehood and incendiarism. The author of this blasphemous and pernicious Pamphlet, therefore, in trying to father his infidelity, his sedition, and his lies, on Carlyle, is doubly guilty of a most heinous crime. And we suspect, we know, and for the welfare of the community we hope to be able soon to point out openly, who and where this vile one is. Yes, only an atheist and anarchist is capable of such villainous mendacity, such unutterable wickedness and treachery. Now, we would especially call upon our readers in Baalbek to be watchful and vigilant, for among them is one, recently come back from America, who harbours under his bushy hair the atheism and anarchy of decadent Europe, etc., etc.’
“And this is followed by secret orders from their Head Office to the Superior of their Branch in Zahleh, to go on with the work hinted in the article aforesaid. Let it not be supposed that I make this statement in jaundice or malice. For the man who was instigated to do this foul work subsequently sold the secret. And the Kaimakam, my friend, when speaking to me of the matter, referred to the article in question, and told me that Khalid was denounced to the Government by the Jesuits as an anarchist. ‘And lest I be compelled,’ he continued, ‘to execute such orders in his case as I might receive any day, I advise you to spirit him away at once.’ ”
But though the Jesuits have succeeded in kicking Khalid out of his home, they did not succeed, thanks to Shakib, in sending him to the Bosphorus. Meanwhile, they sit quiet, hatching another egg.
VI
Flounces and Ruffles
Now, that there is a lull in the machinations of Jesuitry, we shall turn a page or two in Shakib’s account of the courting of Khalid. And apparently everything is propitious. The fates, at
