“They knew both power and beauty,” he declared, “like the Medici of Florence.  There are no leaders like that in the modern world.  To-day beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless....  And taste?  Taste is a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!”

“While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of Mamelukes?” Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.

He nodded.  “It should be the concern of nobles—­not of the rabble.  That is why I should hate your America—­where the rabble prevail.”

“It’s not nice of you to call me a rabble,” said Arlee, busy with her plate of chicken.  “But I want to hear more about your old Mamelukes.  Is the story true about the Sultan’s being so afraid of them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?”

“He did well to fear them,” said Kerissen.  “And he, too, was a strong man who had the power to clear his own path.  Those nobles were in the path of Mohammed Ali.  They were too strong for him, he knew it—­and they knew it and were not afraid.  On one day they were all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum.  It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father’s father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign’s son.  The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man’s eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon of gold.  His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes....  The Mamelukes were feted and courted, and then, as they were leaving the Citadel—­you have been up there?” he broke off to question, and Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child’s, “and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls, between the fortified doors?  Imagine to yourself that deep way filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken leave of their Sultan—­they were a picture of such pride and pomp as Egypt has never seen again.  And then the treachery—­the great gates closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the hosts of death—­the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last moan and hiccough of blood.”

“But one escaped?” questioned the girl, breaking the silence which had followed the cessation of his voice.  “Is it true that one really escaped?”

“Anym-bey—­yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre.  He had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and then the cries.  He comprehended.  Stripping his turban from his head he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop, he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down—­down—­down!  Magnificent!  He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape.  Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him....  He was killed.”