302 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
nostrils with which it seemed to be in the act of smelling me, 
previous to the act of mastication. With the quickness of 
lightning I jerked up my hand, and felt it glide along a skin 
covered with long rough hair ; the next instant my ears were 
stunned by the most dreadful noises, which resembled, as 1 
thought in the horror of the moment, the roaring of a full- 
grown lion. But it was not the roaring of a lion ; it was 
only the braying of an ass. The monster was a Syrian ass. 
There were two of them, and they both began to bray; they 
brayed in concert; and I declare in all sincerity, it was the 
most intolerable concert I ever heard. Had it been a lion, the 
consequences might have been serious to the whole party, as 
well as to the animal himself, for I should certainly have 
called upon Yusef to bring out his pistols and guns, in which 
event there is not the least doubt that some of us would have 
fallen victims to the conflicting wrath of the rival lions. 
Oh, Lamartine ! Alphonse de Lamartine ! if thou couldst 
have witnessed our sufferings on that occasion, I’m certain 
thy tender eyes would have shed floods of briny tears ! In 
thy weeping Pilgrimage thou didst weep for the past, the 
present, and the future ; for the great and the little ; for the 
happy and the wretched ; for the birds of the air and the 
beasts of the field; for the great leviathan of the deep and 
the smallest creeping thing earthly. Thou didst weep when 
thou wert happy and when thou wert sad; when thy heart 
was full and thy tongue refused its office ; and when thy 
tongue spake and thy heart in turn was sealed with sorrow; 
thou didst weep that the land was stricken with ruin, and 
thou didst weep that the ruin was sublime—that thou wert 
gifted with the power to weep, and that there was cause to 
weep—that mankind was wicked and Alphonse de Lamartine 
the only living mourner in the land of desolation; that the 
little wren was happy and the Great Philosopher miserable; 
that the Great Philosopher was a Poet, and the little wren 
neither a poet nor a philosopher but a simple wren. Thou 
didst weep from the beginning unto the end of thy Pilgrimage ; 
thou wegt born with tears in thine eyes, and thou hast shed 
them copiously unto the present day ; wherever thou hast 
