_Besso, the Banker_
IN ONE of those civil broils at Damascus which preceded the fall of the
Janissaries, an Emir of the house of Shehaab, who lost his life in the
fray, had, in the midst of the convulsion, placed his infant son in the
charge of the merchant Besso, a child most dear to him, not only because
the babe was his heir, but because his wife, whom he passionately
loved, a beautiful lady of Antioch and of one of the old families of the
country, had just sacrificed her life in giving birth to their son.
The wife of Besso placed the orphan infant at her own breast, and the
young Fakredeen was brought up in every respect as a child of the house;
so that, for some time, he looked upon the little Eva, who was three
years younger than himself, as his sister. When Fakredeen had
attained an age of sufficient intelligence for the occasion and the
circumstances, his real position was explained to him; but he was still
too young for the communication to effect any change in his feelings,
and the idea that Eva was not his sister only occasioned him sorrow,
until his grief was forgotten when he found that the change made no
difference in their lives or their love.
Soon after the violent death of the father of Fakredeen, affairs had
become more tranquil, and Besso had not neglected the interests of his
charge. The infant was heir to a large estate in the Lebanon; a fine
castle, an illimitable forest, and cultivated lands, whose produce,
chiefly silk, afforded a revenue sufficient to maintain the not
inconsiderable state of a mountain prince.
When Fakredeen was about ten years of age, his relative the Emir
Bescheer, who then exercised a sovereign and acknowledged sway over all
the tribes of the Lebanon, whatever their religion or race, signified
his pleasure that his kinsman should be educated at his court, in the
company of his sons. So Fakredeen, with many tears, quitted his happy
home at Damascus, and proceeded to Beteddeen, the beautiful palace of
his uncle, situate among the mountains in the neighbourhood of Beiroot.
This was about the time that the Egyptians were effecting the conquest
of Syria, and both the Emir Bescheer, the head of the house of
Shehaab as well as Prince of the Mountain, and the great commercial
confederation of the brothers Besso, had declared in favour of the
invader, and were mainly instrumental to the success of Mehemet Ali.
Political sympathy, and the feelings of mutual dependence which
united the Emir Bescheer and the merchant of Damascus, rendered
the communications between the families so frequent that it was not
difficult for the family of Besso to cherish those sentiments of
affection which were strong and lively in the heart of the young
Fakredeen, but which, under any circumstances, depend so much on
sustained personal intercourse. Eva saw a great deal of her former
brother, and there subsisted between them a romantic friendship. He
was their frequent guest at Damascus and was proud to show her how he
excelled in his martial exercises, how skilful he was with his falcon,
and what horses of pure race he proudly rode.
In the year ‘39, Fakredeen being then fifteen years of age, the country
entirely tranquil, even if discontented, occupied by a disciplined
army of 80,000 men, commanded by captains equal it was supposed to any
conjuncture, the Egyptians openly encouraged by the greatest military
nation of Europe, the Turks powerless, and only secretly sustained by
the countenance of the ambassador of the weakest government that ever
tottered in England, a government that had publicly acknowledged that
it had forfeited the confidence of the Parliament which yet it did
not dissolve; everything being thus in a state of flush and affluent
prosperity, and both the house of Shehaab and the house of Besso
feeling, each day more strongly, how discreet and how lucky they had
been in the course which they had adopted, came the great Syrian crash!
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the policy pursued by
the foreign minister of England, with respect to the settlement of the
Turkish Empire in 1840-41, none can be permitted, by those, at least,
competent to decide upon such questions, as to the ability with which
that policy was accomplished. When we consider the position of the
minister at home, not only deserted by Parliament, but abandoned by his
party and even forsaken by his colleagues; the military occupation
of Syria by the Egyptians; the rabid demonstration of France; that an
accident of time or space, the delay of a month or the gathering of a
storm, might alone have baffled all his combinations, it is difficult to
fix upon a page in the history of this country which records a superior
instance of moral intrepidity. The bold conception and the brilliant
performance were worthy of Chatham; but the domestic difficulties with
which Lord Palmerston had to struggle place the exploit beyond the
happiest achievement of the elder Pitt. Throughout the memorable
conjuncture, Lord Palmerston, however, had one great advantage, which
was invisible to the millions; he was served by a most vigilant and able
diplomacy. The superiority of his information concerning the state of
Syria to that furnished to the French minister was the real means
by which he baffled the menaced legions of our neighbours. A timid
Secretary of State in the position of Lord Palmerston, even with such
advantages, might have faltered; but the weapon was placed in the hands
of one who did not shrink from its exercise, and the expulsion of
the Egyptians from Turkey remains a great historic monument alike of
diplomatic skill and administrative energy.
The rout of the Egyptians was fatal to the Emir Bescheer, and it seemed
also, for a time, to the Damascus branch of the family of Besso. But in
these days a great capitalist has deeper roots than a sovereign prince,
unless he is very legitimate. The Prince of the Mountain and his
sons were summoned from their luxurious and splendid Beteddeen to
Constantinople, where they have ever since remained prisoners. Young
Fakredeen, the moment he heard of the fall of Acre, rode out with his
falcon, as if for the pastime of a morning, and the moment he was out of
sight made for the desert, and never rested until he reached the tents
of the children of Rechab, where he placed himself under the protection
of the grandfather of Eva.
As for the merchant himself, having ships at his command, he contrived
to escape with his wife and his young daughter to Trieste, and he
remained in the Austrian dominions between three and four years.
At length the influence of Prince Metternich, animated by Sidonia,
propitiated the Porte. Adarfi Besso, after making his submission at
Stamboul, and satisfactorily explaining his conduct to Riza Pasha,
returned to his country, not substantially injured in fortune, though
the northern clime had robbed him of his Arabian wife; for his brothers,
who, as far as politics were concerned, had ever kept in the shade, had
managed affairs in the absence of the more prominent member of their
house, and, in truth, the family of Besso were too rich to be long under
a cloud. The Pasha of Damascus found his revenue fall very short without
their interference; and as for the Divan, the Bessoes could always find
a friend there if they chose. The awkwardness of the Syrian catastrophe
was, that it was so sudden and so unexpected that there was then no time
for those satisfactory explanations which afterwards took place between
Adam Besso and Riza.
Though the situation of Besso remained, therefore, unchanged after the
subsidence of the Syrian agitation, the same circumstance could not be
predicated of the position of his foster-child. Fakredeen possessed
all the qualities of the genuine Syrian character in excess; vain,
susceptible, endowed with a brilliant though frothy imagination, and a
love of action so unrestrained that restlessness deprived it of energy,
with so fine a taste that he was always capricious, and so ingenious
that he seemed ever inconsistent. His ambition was as high as his
apprehension was quick. He saw everything and understood everybody in
a flash; and believed that everything that was said or done ought to
be made to contribute to his fortunes. Educated in the sweet order, and
amid the decorous virtues of the roof of Besso, Fakredeen, who, from his
susceptibility, took the colour of his companions, even when he thought
they were his tools, had figured for ten years as a soft-hearted and
somewhat timid child, dependent on kind words, and returning kindness
with a passionate affection.
His change to the palace of his uncle developed his native qualities,
which, under any accidents, could not perhaps have been long restrained,
but which the circumstances of the times brought to light, and matured
with a celerity peculiar to the East. The character of Fakredeen was
formed amid the excitement of the Syrian invasion and its stirring
consequences. At ten years of age he was initiated in all the mysteries
of political intrigue. His startling vivacity and the keen relish of his
infant intelligence for all the passionate interests of men amused and
sometimes delighted his uncle. Everything was spoken before him; he
lived in the centre of intrigues which were to shake thrones, and
perhaps to form them. He became habituated to the idea that everything
could be achieved by dexterity, and that there was no test of conduct
except success. To dissemble and to simulate; to conduct confidential
negotiations with contending powers and parties at the same time; to be
ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none; to fall into the public
humour of the moment, and to evade the impending catastrophe; to look
upon every man as a tool, and never do anything which had not a definite
though circuitous purpose; these were his political accomplishments;
and, while he recognised them as the best means of success, he found
in their exercise excitement and delight. To be the centre of a maze of
manoeuvres was his empyrean. He was never without a resource.
Stratagems came to him as naturally as fruit comes to a tree. He lived
in a labyrinth of plans, and he rejoiced to involve some one in the
perplexities which his magic touch could alone unravel. Fakredeen had
no principle of any kind; he had not a prejudice; a little superstition,
perhaps, like his postponing his journey because a hare crossed his
path. But, as for life and conduct in general, forming his opinions
from the great men of whom he had experience, princes, pashas, and some
others, and from the great transactions with which he was connected,
he was convinced that all was a matter of force or fraud. Fakredeen
preferred the latter, because it was more ingenious, and because he was
of a kind and passionate temperament, loving beauty and the beautiful,
apt to idealise everything, and of too exquisite a taste not to shrink
with horror from an unnecessary massacre.
Though it was his profession and his pride to simulate and to dissemble,
he had a native ingenuousness which was extremely awkward and very
surprising, for, the moment he was intimate with you, he told you
everything. Though he intended to make a person his tool, and often
succeeded, such was his susceptibility, and so strong were his
sympathetic qualities, that he was perpetually, without being aware of
it, showing his cards. The victim thought himself safe, but the teeming
resources of Fakredeen were never wanting, and some fresh and brilliant
combination, as he styled it, often secured the prey which so heedlessly
he had nearly forfeited. Recklessness with him was a principle of
action. He trusted always to his fertile expedients if he failed, and
ran the risk in the meanwhile of paramount success, the fortune of those
who are entitled to be rash. With all his audacity, which was nearly
equal to his craft, he had no moral courage; and, if affairs went wrong,
and, from some accident, exhaustion of the nervous system, the weather,
or some of those slight causes which occasionally paralyse the creative
mind, he felt without a combination, he would begin to cry like a
child, and was capable of any action, however base and humiliating, to
extricate himself from the impending disaster.
Fakredeen had been too young to have fatally committed himself during
the Egyptian occupation. The moment he found that the Emir Bescheer and
his sons were prisoners at Constantinople, he returned to Syria, lived
quietly at his own castle, affected popularity among the neighbouring
chieftains, who were pleased to see a Shehaab among them, and showed
himself on every occasion a most loyal subject of the Porte. At
seventeen years of age, Fakredeen was at the head of a powerful party,
and had opened relations with the Divan. The Porte looked upon him with
confidence, and although they intended, if possible, to govern Lebanon
in future themselves, a young prince of a great house, and a young
prince so perfectly free from all disagreeable antecedents, was not to
be treated lightly. All the leaders of all the parties of the mountain
frequented the castle of Fakredeen, and each secretly believed that the
prince was his pupil and his tool. There was not one of these men,
grey though some of them were in years and craft, whom the innocent and
ingenuous Fakredeen did not bend as a nose of wax, and, when Adam Besso
returned to Syria in ‘43, he found his foster-child by far the most
considerable person in the country, and all parties amid their doubts
and distractions looking up to him with hope and confidence. He was then
nineteen years of age, and Eva was sixteen. Fakredeen came instantly
to Damascus to welcome them, hugged Besso, wept like a child over his
sister, sat up the whole night on the terrace of their house smoking
his nargileh, and telling them all his secrets without the slightest
reserve: the most shameful actions of his career as well as the most
brilliant; and finally proposed to Besso to raise a loan for the
Lebanon, ostensibly to promote the cultivation of mulberries, really to
supply arms to the discontented population who were to make Fakredeen
and Eva sovereigns of the mountain. It will have been observed, that to
supply the partially disarmed tribes of the mountain with weapons was
still, though at intervals, the great project of Fakredeen, and to
obtain the result in his present destitution of resources involved
him in endless stratagems. His success would at the same time bind the
tribes, already well affected to him, with unalterable devotion to a
chief capable of such an undeniable act of sovereignty, and of course
render them proportionately more efficient instruments in accomplishing
his purpose. It was the interest of Fakredeen that the Lebanon should be
powerful and disturbed.
Besso, who had often befriended him, and who had frequently rescued
him from the usurers of Beiroot and Sidon, lent a cold ear to these
suggestions. The great merchant was not inclined again to embark in
a political career, or pass another three or four years away from his
Syrian palaces and gardens. He had seen the most powerful head that the
East had produced for a century, backed by vast means, and after having
apparently accomplished his purpose, ultimately recoil before the
superstitious fears of Christendom, lest any change in Syria should
precipitate the solution of the great Eastern problem. He could not
believe that it was reserved for Fakredeen to succeed in that which had
baffled Mehemet Ali.
Eva took the more sanguine view that becomes youth and woman. She had
faith in Fakredeen. Though his position was not as powerful as that of
the great viceroy, it was, in her opinion, more legitimate. He seemed
indicated as the natural ruler of the mountain. She had faith, too,
in his Arabian origin. With Eva, what is called society assumed the
character of a continual struggle between Asia and the North. She
dreaded the idea that, after having escaped the crusaders, Syria should
fall first under the protection, and then the colonisation of some
European power. A link was wanted in the chain of resistance which
connected the ranges of Caucasus with the Atlas. She idealised her
foster-brother into a hero, and saw his standard on Mount Lebanon, the
beacon of the oriental races, like the spear of Shami, or the pavilion
of Abd-el-Kader. Eva had often influenced her father for the advantage
of Fakredeen, but at last even Eva felt that she should sue in vain.
A year before, involved in difficulties which it seemed no combination
could control, and having nearly occasioned the occupation of Syria by
a united French and English force, Fakredeen burst out a-cry-ing like
a little boy, and came whimpering to Eva, as if somebody had broken his
toy or given him a beating. Then it was that Eva had obtained for him
a final assistance from her father, the condition being, that this
application should be the last.
Eva had given him jewels, had interested other members of her family
in his behalf, and effected for him a thousand services, which only
a kind-hearted and quick-witted woman could devise. While Fakredeen
plundered her without scruple and used her without remorse, he doted on
her; he held her intellect in absolute reverence; a word from her guided
him; a look of displeasure, and his heart ached. As long as he was under
the influence of her presence, he really had no will, scarcely an idea
of his own. He spoke only to elicit her feelings and opinions. He had a
superstition that she was born under a fortunate star, and that it
was fatal to go counter to her. But the moment he was away, he would
disobey, deceive, and, if necessary, betray her, loving her the same all
the time. But what was to be expected from one whose impressions were
equally quick and vivid, who felt so much for himself, and so much
for others, that his life seemed a perpetual re-action between intense
selfishness and morbid sensibility?
Had Fakredeen married Eva, the union might have given him some
steadiness of character, or at least its semblance. The young Emir had
greatly desired this alliance, not for the moral purpose that we have
intimated, not even from love of Eva, for he was totally insensible
to domestic joys, but because he wished to connect himself with great
capitalists, and hoped to gain the Lebanon loan for a dower. But this
alliance was quite out of the question. The hand of Eva was destined,
according to the custom of the family, for her cousin, the eldest son of
Besso of Aleppo. The engagement had been entered into while she was at
Vienna, and it was then agreed that the marriage should take place soon
after she had completed her eighteenth year. The ceremony was therefore
at hand; it was to occur within a few months.
Accustomed from an early period of life to the contemplation of this
union, it assumed in the eyes of Eva a character as natural as that of
birth or death. It never entered her head to ask herself whether she
liked or disliked it. It was one of those inevitable things of which we
are always conscious, yet of which we never think, like the years of our
life or the colour of our hair. Had her destiny been in her own hands,
it is probable that she would not have shared it with Fakredeen, for she
had never for an instant entertained the wish that there should be any
change in the relations which subsisted between them. According to the
custom of the country, it was to Besso that Fakredeen had expressed his
wishes and his hopes. The young Emir made liberal offers: his wife and
children might follow any religion they pleased; nay, he was even ready
to conform himself to any which they fixed upon. He attempted to
dazzle Besso with the prospect of a Hebrew Prince of the Mountains. ‘My
daughter,’ said the merchant, ‘would certainly, under any circumstances,
marry one of her own faith; but we need not say another word about it;
she is betrothed, and has been engaged for some years, to her cousin.’
When Fakredeen, during his recent visit to Bethany, found that Eva,
notwithstanding her Bedouin blood, received his proposition for
kidnapping a young English nobleman with the utmost alarm and even
horror, he immediately relinquished it, diverted her mind from the
contemplation of a project on her disapproval of which, notwithstanding
his efforts at distraction, she seemed strangely to dwell, and finally
presented her with a new and more innocent scheme in which he required
her assistance. According to Fakredeen, his new English acquaintance
at Beiroot, whom he had before quoted, was ready to assist him in the
fulfilment of his contract, provided he could obtain sufficient time
from Scheriff Effendi; and what he wished Eva to do was personally to
request the Egyptian merchant to grant time for this indulgence. This
did not seem to Eva an unreasonable favour for her foster-brother
to obtain, though she could easily comprehend why his previous
irregularities might render him an unsuccessful suitor to his creditor.
Glad that it was still in her power in some degree to assist him, and
that his present project was at least a harmless one, Eva offered the
next day to repair to the city and see Scheriff Effendi on his business.
Pressing her hand to his heart, and saluting her with a thousand
endearing names, the Emir quitted the Rose of Sharon with the tears in
his grateful eyes.
Now the exact position of Fakredeen was this: he had induced the
Egyptian merchant to execute the contract for him by an assurance that
Besso would be his security for the venture, although the peculiar
nature of the transaction rendered it impossible for Besso, in his
present delicate position, personally to interfere in it. To keep up
appearances, Fakredeen, with his usual audacious craft, had appointed
Scheriff Effendi to meet him at Jerusalem, at the house of Besso, for
the completion of the contract; and accordingly, on the afternoon of the
day preceding his visit to Bethany, Fakredeen had arrived at Jerusalem
without money, and without credit, in order to purchase arms for a
province.
The greatness of the conjuncture, the delightful climate, his sanguine
temperament, combined, however, to sustain him. As he traversed his
delicious mountains, with their terraces of mulberries, and olives, and
vines, lounged occasionally for a short time at the towns on the coast,
and looked in at some of his creditors to chatter charming delusions,
or feel his way for a new combination most necessary at this moment,
his blood was quick and his brain creative; and although he had ridden
nearly two hundred miles when he arrived at the ‘Holy City,’ he was
fresh and full of faith that ‘something would turn up.’ His Egyptian
friend, awfully punctual, was the first figure that welcomed him as
he entered the divan of Besso, where the young Emir remained in the
position which we have described, smoking interminable nargilehs while
he revolved his affairs, until the conversation respecting the arrival
of Tancred roused him from his brooding meditation.
It was not difficult to avoid Scheriff Effendi for a while. The
following morning, Fakredeen passed half a dozen hours at the bath, and
then made his visit to Eva with the plot which had occurred to him the
night before at the divan, and which had been matured this day while
they were shampooing him. The moment that, baffled, he again arrived at
Jerusalem, he sought his Egyptian merchant, and thus addressed him: ‘You
see, Effendi, that you must not talk on this business to Besso, nor can
Besso talk to you about it.’
‘Good!’ said the Effendi.
‘But, if it be managed by another person to your satisfaction, it will
be as well.’
‘One grain is like another.’
‘It will be managed by another person to your satisfaction.’
‘Good!’
‘The Rose of Sharon is the same in this business as her father?’
‘He is a ruby and she is a pearl.’
‘The Rose of Sharon will see you to-morrow about this business.’
‘Good!’
‘The Rose of Sharon may ask you for time to settle everything; she
has to communicate with other places. You have heard of such a city as
Aleppo?’
‘If Damascus be an eye, Aleppo is an ear.’
‘Don’t trouble the Rose of Sharon, Effendi, with any details if she
speaks to you; but be content with all she proposes. She will ask,
perhaps, for three months; women are nervous; they think robbers may
seize the money on its way, or the key of the chest may not be found
when it is wanted; you understand? Agree to what she proposes; but,
between ourselves, I will meet you at Gaza on the day of the new moon,
and it is finished.’
‘Good.’
Faithful to her promise, at an early hour of the morrow, Eva, wrapped
in a huge and hooded Arab cloak, so that her form could not in the
slightest degree be traced, her face covered with a black Arab mask,
mounted her horse; her two female attendants, habited in the same
manner, followed their mistress; before whom marched her janissary
armed to the teeth, while four Arab grooms walked on each side of the
cavalcade. In this way, they entered Jerusalem by the gate of Sion, and
proceeded to the house of Besso. Fakredeen watched her arrival. He was
in due time summoned to her presence, where he learned the success of
her mission.
‘Scheriff Effendi,’ she said, ‘has agreed to keep the arms for three
months, you paying the usual rate of interest on the money. This is but
just. May your new friend at Beiroot be more powerful than I am, and as
faithful!’
‘Beautiful Rose of Sharon! who can be like you! You inspire me; you
always do. I feel persuaded that I shall get the money long before the
time has elapsed.’ And, so saying, he bade her farewell, to return, as
he said, without loss of time to Beiroot.