After sitting there with dignity, like the rest of the guests, I took my leave, delighted with the truly Persian

[p.88]"apparatus” of the scene.  The Mirza, having no salary, lives by fees extorted from his subjects, who pay rather than lack protection; and his dragoman for a counter-fee will sell their interests shamelessly.  He is a hidalgo of blue blood in pride, pompousness and poverty.  There is not a sheet of writing-paper in the “Consulate"-when they want one a farthing is sent to the grocer’s-yet the Consul drives out in an old carriage with four outriders, two tall-capped men preceding and two following the crazy vehicle.  And the Egyptians laugh heartily at this display, being accustomed by Mohammed Ali to consider all such parade obsolete.

About half-an-hour before midnight sounds the Abrar[FN#27] or call to prayer, at which time the latest wanderers return home to prepare for the Sahur, their dawn meal.  You are careful on the way to address each sentinel with a “Peace be upon thee!” especially if you have no lantern, otherwise you may chance to sleep in the guard-house.  And, chemin faisant, you cannot but stop to gaze at streets as little like what civilised Europe understands by that name as is an Egyptian temple to the new Houses of Parliament.

There are certain scenes, cannily termed “Ken-speckle,” which print themselves upon Memory, and which endure as long as Memory lasts,-a thunder-cloud bursting upon the Alps, a night of stormy darkness off the Cape, an African tornado, and, perhaps, most awful of all, a solitary journey over the sandy Desert.

Of this class is a stroll through the thoroughfares of old Cairo by night.  All is squalor in the brilliancy of noon-day.  In darkness you see nothing but a silhouette.  When, however, the moon is high in the heavens, and the summer stars rain light upon God’s world, there is something not of earth in the view.  A glimpse at the

[p.89]strip of pale blue sky above scarcely reveals three ells of breadth:  in many places the interval is less:  here the copings meet, and there the outriggings of the houses seem to interlace.  Now they are parted by a pencil of snowy sheen, then by a flood of silvery splendour; while under the projecting cornices and the huge hanging balcony-windows of fantastic wood-work, supported by gigantic brackets and corbels, and under deep verandahs, and gateways, vast enough for Behemoth to pass through, and in blind wynds and long cul-de-sacs, lie patches of thick darkness, made visible by the dimmest of oil lamps.  The arch is a favourite feature:  in one place you see it a mere skeleton-rib opening into some huge deserted hall; in another the ogre is full of fretted stone and wood carved like lace-work.  Not a line is straight, the tall dead walls of the Mosques slope over their massy buttresses, and the thin minarets seem about to fall across your path.  The cornices project crookedly from the houses, while the great