ad
planned that I was to dine with the Patriarch, and had borrowed my silver
spoons, etc., etc., in that belief. But the representative of St. Mark
is furious against the American missionaries who have converted some
twenty Copts at Koos, and he could not bring himself to be decently civil
to a Protestant. I found a coarse-looking man seated on a raised divan
smoking his chibouk, on his right were some priests on a low divan; I
went up and kissed his hand and was about to sit by the priests, but he
roughly ordered a cawass to put a wooden chair _off the carpet_ to his
left, at a distance from him, and told me to sit there. I looked round
to see whether any of my neighbours were present, and I saw the
consternation in their faces so, not wishing to annoy them, I did as if I
did not perceive the affront, and sat down and talked for half an hour to
the priests, and then took leave. I was informed that the Catholics were
_naas mesakeen_ (poor inoffensive people), and that the Muslims at least
were of an old religion, but that the Protestants ate meat all the year
round, 'like dogs'--'or Muslims,' put in Omar, who stood behind my chair
and did not relish the mention of dogs and the 'English religion' in one
sentence. As I went the Patriarch called for dinner, it seems he had
told Mikaeel he would not eat with me. It is evidently 'a judgment' of a
most signal nature that I should be snubbed for the offences of
missionaries, but it has caused some ill blood; the Kadee and Sheykh
Yussuf and the rest, who all intended to do the civil to the Patriarch,
now won't go near him on account of his rudeness to me. He has come up
in a steamer, at the Pasha's expense, with a guard of cawasses, and, of
course, is loud in praise of the Government, though he failed in getting
the Moudir to send all the Protestants of Koos to the public works, or
the army.

From what he said before me about the Abyssinians, and still more, from
what he said to others about the English prisoners up there, I am
convinced that the place to put the screw on is the _Batrarchane_
(Patriarch's palace) at Cairo, and that the priests are at the bottom of
that affair. {350} He boasted immensely of the obedience and piety of
_El Habbesh_ (the Abyssinians).

_Saturday_.--Yesterday I heard a little whispered grumbling about the
money demanded by the 'Father.' One of my Copt neighbours was forced to
sell me his whole provision of cooking butter to pay his quota.