a foul
nation, judging by the police regulations needful for them. Please don't
make these remarks public, or I shall be burnt with Stanley and Colenso
(unless I suffer Sheykh Yussuf to propose me El-Islam). He and M. de
Rouge were here last evening, and we had an Arabic _soiree_. M. de Rouge
speaks admirably, quite like an Alim, and it was charming to see Sheykh
Yussuf's pretty look of grateful pleasure at finding himself treated like
a gentleman and a scholar by two such eminent Europeans; for I (as a
woman) am quite as surprising as even M. de Rouge's knowledge of
hieroglyphics and Arabic _Fosseeha_. It is very interesting to see
something of Arabs who have read and have the 'gentleman' ideas. His
brother, the Imam, has lost his wife; he was married twenty-two years,
and won't hear of taking another. I was struck with the sympathy he
expressed with the English Sultana, as all the uneducated people say,
'Why doesn't she marry again?' It is curious how refinement brings out
the same feelings under all 'dispensations.' I apologized to Yussuf for
inadvertently returning the _Salaam aleykoum_ (Peace be with thee), which
he said to Omar, and which I, as an unbeliever, could not accept. He
coloured crimson, touched my hand and kissed his own, quite distressed
lest the distinction might wound me. When I think of a young parsonic
prig at home I shudder at the difference. But Yussuf is superstitious;
he told me how someone down the river cured his cattle with water poured
over a _Mushaf_ (a copy of the Koran), and has hinted at writing out a
chapter for me to wear as a _hegab_ (an amulet for my health). He is
interested in the antiquities and in M. de Rouge's work, and is quite up
to the connection between Ancient Egypt and the books of Moses,
exaggerating the importance of _Seyidna Moussa_, of course.

If I go down to Cairo again I will get letters to some of the Alim there
from Abd-el-Waris, the Imam here, and I shall see what no European but
Lane has seen. I think things have altered since his day, and that men
of that class would be less inaccessible than they were then; and then a
woman who is old (Yussuf guessed me at sixty) and educated does not
shock, and does interest them. All the Europeans here are traders, and
only speak the vulgarest language, and don't care to know Arab gentlemen;
if they see anything above their servants it is only Turks, or Arab
merchants at times. Don't fancy that I can speak at