Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/81

 Shereef, or "holy,"—a title of honor, which, with the privilege of bearing the green turban, he well deserved, not only from the blood of the Prophet which glowed in his veins, but from the well-known sanctity of his life, and the length of his blessed beard.

Mysseri, of course, still travelled with me, but the Arabic was not one of the seven languages which he spoke so perfectly, and I was, therefore, obliged to hire another interpreter. I had no difficulty in finding a proper man for the purpose—one Demetrius,—or, as he was always called, Dthemetri, a native of Zante, who had been tossed about by fortune in all directions. He spoke the Arabic very well, and communicated with me in Italian. The man was a very zealous member of the Greek church. He had been a tailor. He was as ugly as the devil, having a thoroughly Tatar countenance, which expressed the agony of his body or mind, as the case might be, in the most ludicrous manner imaginable; he embellished the natural caricature of his person, by suspending about his neck, and shoulders, and waist, quantities of little bundles and parcels, which he thought too valuable to be entrusted to the jerking of packsaddles. The mule which fell to his lot on this journey, every now and then, forgetting that his rider was a saint, and remembering that he was a tailor, took a quiet roll upon the ground, and stretched his limbs calmly and lazily, as if he were preparing to hear a long sermon. Dthemetri never got seriously hurt, but the subversion and dislocation of his bundles made him for the moment a sad spectacle of ruin, and when he regained his legs, his wrath with the mule became very amusing. He always addressed the beast in language which implied, that he, as a Christian and saint, had been personally insulted and oppressed by a Mahometan mule. Dthemetri, however, on the whole, proved to be a most able and capital servant; I suspected him of now and then leading me out of my way, in order that he might have an opportunity of visiting the shrine of a saint, and on one occasion, as you will see by and by, he was induced, by religious motives, to commit a gross breach of duty; but putting these pious faults out of the question (and they were faults of the right side), he was always faithful and true to me.