and in the neighbouring places, but to no purpose.
Oh, that dreadful, dismal day, when everywhither I went something seemed to whisper in my heart, ‘Khalid is no more.’ It was the first time in my life that I felt the pangs of separation, the sting of death and sorrow. The days and months passed, heartlessly confirming my conjecture, my belief.
“One evening, when the last glimmer of hope passed away, I sat down and composed a threnody in his memory. And I sent it to one of the newspapers of Beirut, in the hope that Khalid, if he still lived, might chance to see it.
It was published and quoted by other journals here and in Egypt, who, in their eulogies, spoke of Khalid as the young Baalbekian philosopher and poet. One of these newspapers, whose editor is a dear friend of mine, and of comely ancient virtue, did not mention, from a subtle sense of tender regard for my feelings, the fact that Khalid committed suicide.
‘He died,’ the Notice said, ‘of a sudden and violent defluxion of rheums, which baffled the physician and resisted his skill and physic.’
Another journal, whose editor’s religion is of the Jesuitical pattern, spoke of him as a miserable God-abandoned wretch who was not entitled to the right of Christian burial; and fulminated at its contemporaries for eulogising the youthful infidel and moaning his death, thus spreading and justifying his evil example.
“And so, the days passed, and the months, and Khalid was still dead. In the summer of this year, when the Constitution was proclaimed, and the country was rioting in the saturnalia of Freedom and Equality, my sorrow was keener, deeper than ever. Not I alone, but the cities and the deserts of Syria and Arabia, missed my loving friend. How gloriously he would have filled the tribune of the day, I sadly mused. …