tever
the perfection which he afterwards attained, I do not believe that he
ever painted a work fuller of life, more individual, and more striking.
It made a deep and curious impression upon me; I went time and again to
see it; I could not take my eyes off it, and it exercised upon me a sort
of nostalgic fascination. It was from that painting that my dreams
started upon fantastic trips through the narrow streets of ancient Cairo
once traversed by Caliph Haroun al Raschid and his faithful vizier
Jaffier, under the disguise of slaves or common people. My admiration
for the painting was so well known that Marilhat's family gave me, after
the death of the famous artist, the pencil sketch of the subject made on
the spot, and which he had used as a study for the finished work.

And now we had arrived. A great mob of carriages, asses, donkey drivers,
porters, guides, dragomans, rioted in front of the railway station,
which is at Boulah, a short distance from old Cairo. When we had
recovered our luggage, and I had been installed with my friend in a
handsome open carriage preceded by a _sais_, it was with secret delight
that I heard the Egyptian providence which watched over us in its
_Nizam_ uniform and its magenta fez, call out to the coachman, "Hotel
Shepheard, Ezbekiyeh Place." I was going to lodge in my dream.

EZBEKIYEH SQUARE

A few minutes later the carriage stopped before the steps of the Hotel
Shepheard, which has a sort of veranda provided with chairs and sofas
for the convenience of travellers who desire to enjoy the cool air. We
were received cordially, and given a fine room, very high-ceiled, with
two beds provided with mosquito-nets, and a window looking out upon the
Ezbekiyeh Square.

I did not expect to find Marilhat's painting before me, unchanged, and
merely enlarged to the proportions of reality. The accounts of tourists
who had recently returned from Egypt had made me aware that the
Ezbekiyeh no longer looked the same as formerly, when the waters of the
Nile turned it into a lake in times of flood, and when it still
preserved its true Arab character.

Huge mimosas and sycamores fill up the centre of the square with domes
of foliage so intensely green that it looks almost black. On the left
rises a row of houses, among which are to be seen, side by side with the
newer buildings, old Arab dwellings more or less modernised. A great
number of moucharabiehs had disappeared. There remains a sufficient