His
features were small, well-formed, and delicate, though deeply
embrowned by the Eastern sun, and terminated by a flowing and
curled black beard, which seemed trimmed with peculiar care. The
nose was straight and regular, the eyes keen, deep-set, black,
and glowing, and his teeth equalled in beauty the ivory of his
deserts. The person and proportions of the Saracen, in short,
stretched on the turf near to his powerful antagonist, might have
been compared to his sheeny and crescent-formed sabre, with its
narrow and light but bright and keen Damascus blade, contrasted
with the long and ponderous Gothic war-sword which was flung
unbuckled on the same sod. The Emir was in the very flower of
his age, and might perhaps have been termed eminently beautiful,
but for the narrowness of his forehead and something of too much
thinness and sharpness of feature, or at least what might have
seemed such in a European estimate of beauty.
The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful, and
decorous; indicating, however, in some particulars, the habitual
restraint which men of warm and choleric tempers often set as a
guard upon their native impetuosity of disposition, and at the
same time a sense of his own dignity, which seemed to impose a
certain formality of behaviour in him who entertained it.
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