His long beard, now silvered with age, descended over his breast.

One of two youthful acolytes who attended him created an artificial shade, peculiar then to the East, by bearing over his head an umbrella of palmetto leaves, while the other refreshed his reverend master by agitating a fan of peacock-feathers.
When the Bishop of Tyre entered the hut of the Scottish knight, the master was absent, and the Moorish physician, whom he had come to see, sat in the very posture in which De Vaux had left him several hours before, cross-legged upon a mat made of twisted leaves, by the side of the patient, who appeared in deep slumber, and whose pulse he felt from time to time.

The bishop remained standing before him in silence for two or three minutes, as if expecting some honourable salutation, or at least that the Saracen would seem struck with the dignity of his appearance.

But Adonbec el Hakim took no notice of him beyond a passing glance, and when the prelate at length saluted him in the lingua franca current in the country, he only replied by the ordinary Oriental greeting, "SALAM ALICUM--Peace be with you." "Art thou a physician, infidel ?" said the bishop, somewhat mortified at this cold reception.

"I would speak with thee on that art." "If thou knewest aught of medicine," answered El Hakim, "thou wouldst be aware that physicians hold no counsel or debate in the sick chamber of their patient.