These formalities concluded, casting off the iron discipline of war, we descended a joyous mob, or rather the Abati did, to partake of the delights of peace.  Really, conquerors returning from some desperate adventure could not have been more warmly greeted.  As we entered the suburbs of the town, women, some of them very handsome, ran out and embraced their lords or lovers, holding up babies for them to kiss, and a little farther on children appeared, throwing roses and pomegranate flowers before their triumphant feet.  And all this because these gallant men had ridden to the bottom of a pass and back again!

“Heavens!  Doctor,” exclaimed the sardonic Quick, after taking note of these demonstrations, “Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be.  And to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned in a dispatch—­yes, I, Sergeant Quick, mentioned in a dispatch by the biggest ass of a general as ever I clapped eyes on, for a job that I won’t detail, no one in my native village ever took no note of me, although I had written to the parish clerk, who happens to be my brother-in-law, and told him the train I was coming by.  I tell you, Doctor, no one so much as stood me a pint of beer, let alone wine,” and he pointed to a lady who was proffering that beverage to some one whom she admired.

“And as for chucking their arms round my neck and kissing me,” and he indicated another episode, “all my old mother said—­she was alive then—­was that she ‘hoped I’d done fooling about furrin’ parts as I called soldiering, and come home to live respectable, better late than never.’  Well, Doctor, circumstances alter cases, or blood and climate do, which is the same thing, and I didn’t miss what I never expected, why should I when others like the Captain there, who had done so much more, fared worse?  But, Lord! these Abati are a sickening lot, and I wish we were clear of them.  Old Barung’s the boy for me.”

Passing down the main street of this charming town of Mur, accompanied by these joyous demonstrators, we came at last to its central square, a large, open space where, in the moist and genial climate, for the high surrounding mountains attracted plentiful showers of rain, trees and flowers grew luxuriantly.  At the head of this square stood a long, low building with white-washed walls and gilded domes, backed by the towering cliff, but at a little distance from it, and surrounded by double walls with a moat of water between them, dug for purposes of defence.

This was the palace, which on my previous visit I had only entered once or twice when I was received by the Child of Kings in formal audience.  Round the rest of this square, each placed in its own garden, were the houses of the great nobles and officials, and at its western end, among other public buildings, a synagogue or temple which looked like a model of that built by Solomon in Jerusalem, from the description of which it had indeed been copied, though, of course, upon a small scale.