This entirely novel and disquieting conceit recalled his strange
obsession when, first he looked out over the desert at night from the
bows of the yacht, and the memory brought with it the legend of his
house--that the Roysons were descendants of Coeur-de-Lion. He saw now
that which he had never realized from the glowing pages of written
romance, that the Crusaders must have mixed with people nearly
identical in manner and speech with the strange human miscellany of
Massowah. During those medieval campaigns in an arid and poverty-
stricken land, feudal pomp and regal glitter would yield perforce to
the demands of existence. Richard of England and Philip of France, with
many another noble warrior of high repute, had doubtless been glad
enough, times without number, to seek the shelter and meager fare of
just such a jumble of darkened tenements as that through which his
guide was leading him.
But why should he, Richard Royson, acknowledge an occult acquaintance
with this unknown scene? And what was the fascination which the squalid
life of the bazaar had exercised occasionally on men of exalted rank at
different periods of the world's history? The mere notion that he might
succumb to it--that he should even feel its glamour by the operation of
some subtle trait of heredity--was so grotesque that he laughed aloud.
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