“I have much to worry me privately, for the veil is entirely torn aside.  You alone remain to me; your affection is very dear to me:  nothing more remains to make me a misanthrope than to lose her and see you betray me....  Buy a country seat against my return, either near Paris or in Burgundy.  I need solitude and isolation:  grandeur wearies me:  the fount of feeling is dried up:  glory itself is insipid.  At twenty-nine years of age I have exhausted everything.  It only remains to me to become a thorough egoist."[109]

Many rumours were circulated as to Bonaparte’s public appearance in oriental costume and his presence at a religious service in a mosque.  It is even stated by Thiers that at one of the chief festivals he repaired to the great mosque, repeated the prayers like a true Moslem, crossing his legs and swaying his body to and fro, so that he “edified the believers by his orthodox piety.”  But the whole incident, however attractive scenically and in point of humour, seems to be no better authenticated than the religious results about which the historian cherished so hopeful a belief.  The truth seems to be that the general went to the celebration of the birth of the Prophet as an interested spectator, at the house of the sheik, El Bekri.  Some hundred sheikhs were there present:  they swayed their bodies to and fro while the story of Mahomet’s life was recited; and Bonaparte afterwards partook of an oriental repast.  But he never forgot his dignity so far as publicly to appear in a turban and loose trousers, which he donned only once for the amusement of his staff.[110] That he endeavoured to pose as a Moslem is beyond doubt.  Witness his endeavour to convince the imams at Cairo of his desire to conform to their faith.  If we may believe that dubious compilation, “A Voice from St. Helena,” he bade them consult together as to the possibility of admission of men, who were not circumcised and did not abstain from wine, into the true fold.  As to the latter disability, he stated that the French were poor cold people, inhabitants of the north, who could not exist without wine.  For a long time the imams demurred to this plea, which involved greater difficulties than the question of circumcision:  but after long consultations they decided that both objections might be waived in consideration of a superabundance of good works.  The reply was prompted by an irony no less subtle than that which accompanied the claim, and neither side was deceived in this contest of wits.

A rude awakening soon came.  For some few days there had been rumours that the division under Desaix which was fighting the Mamelukes in Upper Egypt had been engulfed in those sandy wastes; and this report fanned to a flame the latent hostility against the unbelievers.  From many minarets of Cairo a summons to arms took the place of the customary call to prayer:  and on October 21st the French garrison was so fiercely and suddenly attacked as to leave the issue doubtful.  Discipline and grapeshot finally prevailed, whereupon a repression of oriental ferocity cowed the spirits of the townsfolk and of the neighbouring country.  Forts were constructed in Cairo and at all the strategic points along the lower Nile, and Egypt seemed to be conquered.