Once again, such curious talk comes back to us. Tonics are necessary to us. The vise that is crushing Lebanon is tightening. Our villages are emp-tying. In Chartoun, eight houses out of twenty stand deserted, thresholds gaping, without doors or shutters.

In Aley a single knell announces several deaths at once.

The Istaz Anis proposes an agreement to us. To bind up our wills to the point of numbness. Whatever may happen, to forbid ourselves to speak of it.

•

My modest little village of Chartoun lies in the shadow of great Aley. Beyond it, the rutted road leads to abandoned spinning mills.

Our gatherings pass unno-ticed. Above us rise hillsides of neglected vineyards, still bearing, and of fig trees, between which grow herbs fit only for burning. Naturally we glean there.

On the opposite side, valleys traced out in bright-edged lat-tices stretch down to the sea.

My house is habitable. In consideration of my former distinction as mudir, my creditor allows me the use of it. My one companion is a dog, Kalb, his coat of short brown hair so loose upon his bones that he floats in it. Every movement drapes folds over him that break my heart.

At nightfall, I step out onto my threshold, with him following.

In spite of everything, our friendly reunions are good. Long before they draw near, the silhouettes show distinct. Nessib tall, slender. Anis, of middle height, grown very thin.

Whether the horizon over the road be all clouds and lightning, or the pale blue-gray of summer, they salute by raising an arm, both at once. As I repeat the gesture, Kalb wags his tail

with an effort. Taleb has won the dog's heart by bringing him now and then a bone filched for him from a butcher's shop in Aley, drawing it straight out of his pocket, and letting his face be licked without disgust.

As we go in without speaking, Nessib opens his thick lips and, with a smile by way of preface, announces:

"My uncle is dead."

We knew of no kin of his, and his breach of our agreement surprised us. The tone, too, seemed singular. He delivered the news, it appeared, with satisfaction.

"I am avenged," he added. I dreaded what was coming, without being able to stop it.

Excusing himself only by the same half smile:

"My uncle was a brute," he said. And when we had sat down:

"I was left an orphan at ten," he went on; "the uncle who has just died — for the second time — is my father's brother. It was he who should have brought me up."

"How so?" Taleb inter-rupted.

Without regard for the interruption, or for our looks of surprise, Nessib recounted his childhood. At first, he and his mother, taken in by Sheikh Ali, had lived at his charge.

But at the slightest fault, he said, sometimes for no reason, my uncle would beat me till the blood came. His violence grew worse when he entered the confraternity of the sages, a religious dignity which among the Druze entails painful restric-tions. And Nessib shook his head with its curly hair, abundant and unruly. No more play, no drink. Smoking and swearing forbidden. Privations that would drive even the sage Taleb mad, he smiled.

And my violent uncle was no sage. One day he caught me

in the garden holding a lighted cigarette. The old man's eyes blazed up with fury. He tore off a mulberry branch and broke the stick across my back. Then, following me from room to room, he found within reach an iron rod from a bed, and struck me with it so savagely that Umm Nessib, running up, gathered me up unconscious.

As soon as I was recovered, said Sheikh Nessib, my mother bundled up our things and we fled. We never saw the uncle again, not even for the funeral prayers.

A year after my fault, he died of an embolism. And even as people, hurrying in, watched him breathe his last, others, at the next-door neighbors', were delivering a little new-born mule; which mule — long wretched, starved, and then crippled — lived until this morning. The beast is known to all Aley. You yourselves have surely seen it, without noticing it. It was the one beast of burden which, to its misfortune, escaped the requisitions. Hidden at first by its master like a treasure, then infirm and famished, the price of barley made of it a very heavy charge. It could be seen aban-doned, without a halter, now col-lapsed on one side, now hobbling along, its muzzle grazing the ground of the souk, its hide plas-tered with great black patches, its sores covered with flies.

Suspected of harboring the soul of the wicked Sheikh, everyone wished for its death and no one dared buy it. For four years it brayed with hunger and pain. How many times did I myself hold back from striking it. No — even if he deserves it, one does not strike an old uncle.

God forgive him! and God be praised for His justice! For there is a justice, and I believe in it. "Do you not?" he asked us.