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Memoirs of
the point, was his cry: and I could bring truth to a point as sharp as a needle. I divested a subject of all extraneous matter, and there it was—you might turn and twist it as you would, but you must always come back to that.
"The Druzes like me, and all the Emir Beshýr's hatred of me arose from my friendship for the Shaykh Beshýr.[1] I After you left me, I went to stay with him at Makhtara, where he assigned me a wing of the palace to live in. He was a clever man, and afterwards, in his troubles, came to me for advice and succour: he offered me a third of his treasures, but I refused them. When he fled, the Emir Beshýr got about a third of them; an equal portion they say is buried: and
- ↑ The reader ought to be informed that, a few years before this time, Beshýr Jumbalàt, a man of the first family of the Druzes, had risen by his possessions and influence to such power in Mount Lebanon as to excite the jealousy of the Emir Beshýr, the recognized prince of the Druzes, by right of investiture from the Porte. The Emir (who is a Mussulman) entertained such fears of being supplanted by a chief of his power and popularity, that, after a variety of intrigues and plots, he at last succeeded in effectually awakening the distrust of Abdallah, the Pasha of Acre, who finally united with the Emir in a plan for his destruction. The person of the unfortunate Beshýr Jumbalat was accordingly seized, his palace razed to the ground, and his possessions confiscated; nor was their jealousy set at rest until they ultimately got rid of him by strangulation.
