Christian fane untouched--that I know from our chief Amru himself."

"It was the principal church of the Melchites, the Emperor's minions,"
cried the guide, as if that were ample explanation of the fact. The
merchant, however, did not take it so.

"Well," he said, "and what is there so dreadful in their creed?"

"What?" said the Egyptian, and his eye flashed wrathfully. "What?--
They dismember the divine person of the Saviour and attribute to it two
distinct natures. And then!--All the Greeks settled here, and encouraged
by the protection of the emperor, treated us, the owners of the land,
like slaves, till your nation came to put an end to their oppression.
They drove us by force into their churches, and every true-born Egyptian
was punished as a rebel and a leper. They mocked at us and persecuted us
for our faith in the one divine nature of our Lord."

"And so," interrupted the merchant, "as soon as we drove out the Greeks
you behaved more unmercifully to them and their sanctuaries than we--whom
you scorn as infidels--did to you!"

"Mercy?--for them!" cried the Egyptian indignantly, as he cast an evil
eye on the demolished edifice. "They have reaped what they sowed; and
now every one in Egypt who does not believe in your One God--blessed be
the Saviour!--confesses the one sole nature of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You drove out the Melchite rabble, and then it was our part to demolish
the temples of their wretched Saviour, who lost His divine Unity at the
synod of Chalcedon--damnation wait upon it!"

"But still the Melchites are fellow-believers with you--they are