Druze discipline.

The couple accompanying me having announced to some acquaintances the President of the Lebanese Women's League and Mme Naggiar, two guides open the way for us, courteously setting aside the obstacles. The footpath is frightfully slippery and steep. From its summit one glimpses the cluster of the houses of Moukhtara, at whose center the "dwelling" of Nazira, its high double flight of stairs completely covered with women. The road has become relatively passable; only the men move about, the weaker sex perched as high as possible. It seems that the feminine part of Moukhtara has been given over today to

devotion to the dead woman, whose magic wand still works on her behalf. A flowering of veils like the almond trees of two weeks ago; their white petals cover the heart of the Druze capital.

In the hushed silence, the loudspeaker transmits speeches and the injunction to restrain all lamentation.

Our guides part the wave of men, heads bare or turbaned, with long beards black or vener-able. No jostling, no shots fired, but the cry "Make way for the Lebanese Women's Delegation," which, like an "open sesame" that had worked until now, has become vain. We must follow

our guides through a secret vaulted passage.

From entrance to entrance and from galleries to salons, we reach the immense hall where, at the center of a thousand women, enthroned upon a final elevation, stands an open catafalque. A queen vanquished only by death: a transparent silk muslin covers three-quarters of the once so intelligent and affable face of the dead woman. One can make out upon her only white satin, on which rests a cross of the Legion of Honor.

I looked, without finding it, for the gold medal of the Lebanese Order of Merit.

My young companion, lifted up so as to be heard, pronounces