Going to weight, he was still muscular and well groomed.

His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in every gesture.
He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love to carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost religious.

It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy--it carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward urbanity, a philosophical apathy.

He had had his great fight for place and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt since a child.

Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of marriage and inheritance.