ia impossibile_ would find
no favour here; 'What is impossible to God?' settles everything. In
short, Mohammed has somehow left the stamp of romance on the religion, or
else it is in the blood of the people, though the Koran is prosy and
'common-sensical' compared to the Old Testament. I used to think Arabs
intensely prosaic till I could understand a little of their language, but
now I can trace the genealogy of Don Quixote straight up to some
Sheykh-el-Arab.

A fine, handsome woman with a lovely baby came to me the other day. I
played with the baby, and gave it a cotton handkerchief for its head.
The woman came again yesterday to bring me a little milk and some salad
as a present, and to tell my fortune with date stones. I laughed, and so
she contented herself with telling Omar about his family, which he
believed implicitly. She is a clever woman evidently, and a great sibyl
here. No doubt she has faith in her own predictions. She told Mme.
Mounier (who is a Levantine) that she would never have a child, and was
forbidden the house accordingly, and the prophecy has 'come true.'
Superstition is wonderfully infectious here. The fact is that the Arabs
are so intensely impressionable, and so cowardly about inspiring any
ill-will, that if a man looks askance at them it is enough to make them
ill, and as calamities are not infrequent, there is always some mishap
ready to be laid to the charge of somebody's 'eye.' Omar would fain have
had me say nothing about the theft of my purse, for fear the Karnac
people should hate me and give me the eye. A part of the boasting about
property, etc., is politeness, so that one may not be supposed to be
envious of one's neighbours' nice things. My Sakka (water carrier)
admired my bracelet yesterday, as he was watering the verandah floor, and
instantly told me of all the gold necklaces and earrings he had bought
for his wife and daughters, that I might not be uneasy and fear his
envious eye. He is such a good fellow. For two shillings a month he
brings up eight or ten huge skins of water from the river a day, and
never begs or complains, always merry and civil. I shall enlarge his
backsheesh. There are a lot of camels who sleep in the yard under my
verandah; they are pretty and smell nice, but they growl and swear at
night abominably. I wish I could draw you an Egyptian farm-yard, men,
women and cattle; but what no one can draw is the amber light, so
brilliant and so soft, no