son for hurting Egypt,
as you have done. I did not value my life, as you know well, for it
has been flung into the midst of dangers for Egypt's sake, how
often! It was not cowardice which made me hide from you and all the
world the killing of Foorgat Bey. I desired to face the penalty,
for did not my act deny all that I had held fast from my youth up?
But there was another concerned--a girl, but a child in years, as
innocent and true a being as God has ever set among the dangers of
this life, and, by her very innocence and unsuspecting nature, so
much more in peril before such unscrupulous wiles as were used by
Foorgat Bey.

"I have known you many years, Nahoum, and dark and cruel as your
acts have been against the work I gave my life to do, yet I think
that there was ever in you, too, the root of goodness. Men would
call your acts treacherous if they knew what you had done; and so
indeed they were; but yet I have seen you do things to others--not
to me--which could rise only from the fountain of pure waters. Was
it partly because I killed Foorgat and partly because I came to
place and influence and power, that you used me so, and all that I
did? Or was it the East at war with the West, the immemorial feud
and foray?

"This last I will believe; for then it will seem to be something
beyond yourself--centuries of predisposition, the long stain of the
indelible--that drove you to those acts of matricide. Ay, it is
that! For, Armenian as you are, this land is your native land, and
in pulling down what I have built up--with you, Nahoum, with you--
you have plunged the knife into the bosom of your mother. Did it
never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good
work--the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the
lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug,
the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for
the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow
blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet
growth of law and justice, the new industries started--did not all
these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great
genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things
that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake? Giving with one hand
freely, did your soul not misgive you when you took away