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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



away." I did so ; and so ended my visit, without 

 making any report.' 



" ' Was Motus drunk ? ' I asked. 



" ' He was drunk,' answered Hekekyan, ' as 

 all the naval officers were ; they expected to be 

 sent out to fight Napier, and kept drinking to 

 keep up their spirits. 



" ' The viceroy,' he added, ' was not pleased 

 at my having witnessed his emotion or his neglect- 

 ed state ; but what completed my disgrace was 

 my having alluded some months after to the 

 events of that night. He immediately sent me 

 off to Cairo, on a trifling errand about the forti- 

 fications of the citadel, and kept me there for 

 three months. 



" ' At the end of that time I received a sum- 

 mons from Meneele Pasha, the man who has just 

 returned from Eupatoria, who was the Minister 

 of War. He placed me by him on his divan and 

 gave me a pipe, but said nothing. Then came 

 coffee. I just sipped mine, and found it totally 

 unlike anything that I had ever tasted before ; it 

 was nauseous and intensely bitter. I gave it 

 back to the servant. Meneele looked hard at 

 me, but said nothing. I sat a few minutes longer, 

 waiting for him to tell me why he had sent for 

 me, and, hearing nothing, went away, without a 

 word having passed between us. Half an hour 

 after Mehemct Ali arrived from Alexandria at 

 the citadel. 



" ' I cannot but suspect that I had become 

 disagreeable, and that he had directed Meneele 

 to dispose of me before his return to Cairo. It 

 certainly seemed that the only purpose for which 

 Meneele summoned me was that I might drink 

 that cup of coffee.' 



" ' But,' I said, ' if Mehemet Ali wished to re- 

 move you, might he not have had recourse to a 

 more certain expedient? ' 



" ' There were objections,' answered Hekek- 

 yan, ' in my case to the use of the dagger or 

 the cord. I was not then, as I am now, alone; 

 one of my brothers-in-law was his prime-minis- 

 ter, another was his first interpreter. It would 

 have been inconvenient to part with them, and 

 they certainly would have quitted him. 



" ' He wished me to die, but he did not wish 

 to be suspected of having killed me. I believe 

 that it was for the same purpose that he sent me 

 a few months after, at the beginning of the hot 

 season, to pass some months in the Southern 

 Desert ; and I am not sure that he did not take 

 means to increase the dangers of the desert. 

 The only place at which I halted was Berenice, 

 on the Red Sea, where I spent a month, time 



enough for my sojourn there to be known at 

 Cairo. A few days after I had left Berenice a 

 party of armed Bishareem arrived there, inquired 

 anxiously for me, and, finding that I was gone, 

 followed me ; luckily I left Komsko on the Nile 

 before them, and in my boat I was safe, for the 

 Bishareem are not aquatic' 



" ' Are they coarse or scientific poisoners,' I 

 asked, ' in Egypt ? ' 



" ' Scientific,' answered Lieder. ' The poisons 

 are vegetable, and are not often intended to pro- 

 duce an immediate result, or even to operate by 

 a single dose ; they undermine the health by fre- 

 quent repetition. The custom of giving coffee 

 to every visitor affords great facilities to what 

 may be called dietetic poisoning. In Europe, 

 unless you live in the same house with a man, 'it 

 is difficult to poison him unless he dines with 

 you, and even then, without accomplices. The 

 accomplices cannot be easily obtained, and they 

 would possess a dangerous secret, which would 

 make them your masters. You seldom can re- 

 peat the dose, it must therefore be violent. The 

 fact of his having dined with you would be easily 

 proved, and his death by poison connected with 

 it. The poisonings of Europe, therefore, are fam- 

 ily poisonings. 



" ' In Egypt a man may drink coffee in the 

 course of the morning at ten different houses. A 

 single accomplice is all that is necessary ; there 

 is no difficulty in prevailing on him to accept the 

 office ; it is as natural to him as any other ser- 

 vice. He does not think much about it, and is 

 not likely to talk about it. If he does, you poi- 

 son him, or have him strangled, and bury him in 

 your garden. You run little risk by doing so ; 

 nothing that happens in a man's house is known. 

 For most purposes, indeed for all purposes, ex- 

 cept opposing the will of the pasha, a man's 

 house is his castle in Egypt more really than it is 

 in England. The reverence paid to the harem 

 extends to everything that is under the same 

 roof. The Egyptian thinks himself well recom- 

 pensed for being a slave abroad by being absolute 

 at home. He would not accept freedom or secu- 

 rity for himself if the condition were that it should 

 extend to his household.' 



" ' In this country,' said Hekekyan, ' the dis- 

 appearance of an unprotected man is not noticed. 

 If I were to walk out to-morrow and not to re- 

 turn, no one except Madame Hekekyan would 

 think about it. She would be alarmed the first 

 night, and more so the second, and on the third 

 she would give me up for lost. But she would 

 infer that I had been removed by the higher pow- 



