ABSTRACT
When we had come out of quarantine, I rented an apartment for three months in the house of some Maronite Christians about half a league from the town. Most of these houses, situated amid gardens, Standing in rows along terraces planted with mulberry-trees, look like little manor-houses of the feudal period, solidly built of brownish Stone with loopholes and arches. Outside Staircases lead to the different floors, each of which has a terrace of its own, until you reach that which is at the top of the whole house, where the families gather in the evening to enjoy the view over the gulf. On every side was thick glossy verdure, with only the regular hedges of noplas to mark the divisions. The first days we were there I gave myself up completely to the enjoyment of the coolness and shade. Everywhere around us there seemed to be life and comfort; the women well dressed, beautiful and unveiled, going and coming with those heavy pitchers which they fill at the cisterns, and carry gracefully upon their shoulders. Our hostess, who wore upon her head a kind of cone draped with a shawl, which, with the tresses of long hair adorned with sequins, gave her the air of an Assyrian queen, was only the wife of a tailor who kept a shop in the Beyrouth 252bazaar. Her two daughters and the younger children lived on the first floor, and we occupied the second.
