RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF YUSEF BADRA. 413 
A momentary pleasure to you, would have been death to him. 
For I certainly could not have arrested your arm, situated as 
we were in a narrow pass.” 
“It is even as your Excellency says,” replied Yusef, with 
deep contrition ; “ such, indeed, was my intention. I freely 
confess it. But consider, beloved General, the circumstances, 
I may say the character and extent of the provocation. For 
nearly forty days have I restrained myself to gratify your Ex¬ 
cellency. Never before have I performed the journey through 
Syria without killing at least six men. This time what have 
I killed ? My sword and fire-arms are fairly rusty for want of 
use. Not a single life have I taken up to the present date.” 
“ You are certainly mistaken in that, Yusef. 1 saw you 
cut the heads off of more than a hundred chickens before we 
reached Jerusalem, and I have your own word for it that you 
killed a gazelle on the plains of Esdraelon. Besides that, you 
struck terror into the soul of every suspicious vagabond on the 
road ; and I’ll venture to assert that many of them have since 
died from fright, which, the experience of medical men suffi¬ 
ciently demonstrates, has frequently produced that result. 
Now, I hold, that you might as well kill a man as frighten 
him to death.” 
“ Your Excellency is right,” cried Yusef; “ I did do some 
trifling service in that way, merely to keep my hand in. I 
likewise killed a couple of men in Jerusalem, as a matter of 
amusement. I had forgotten the circumstance. However, I 
shall never be able to show my face in Beirut, or sleep soundly 
on my arrival there, without killing at least one more ; and 
I ask it, as a special favor, that your Excellency will not deny 
me this pleasure.” 
“ Most emphatically I forbid it, Yusef. Furthermore, I 
take this occasion to declare that if you attack or molest in 
any way a single unoffending person between this and Beirut, 
I shall put you in a book. Not one of your daring and intrepid 
acts has escaped my notice. These frightful exhibitions of 
chivalry—these perils that you are continually rushing upon, 
endangering not only your own life but the lives of the whole 
party, shall be fully described and held up to the traveling com- 
