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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



say?" "Let the letter be translated to you," I 

 answered. This was done. He rose from bis 

 divan and began to walk up and down the room 

 exclaiming : " I will not give up the fleet ; they 

 may burn it if they can, they may burn Alexan- 

 dria, they may drive me out of Egypt and I will 

 live a hadji in Mecca ; but they shall not drive 

 me out of Egypt, or even out of Alexandria. I 

 will fight until further resistance is impossible. 

 I will make my last stand in the powder-maga- 

 zine, and when all is lost, je sauterai." " This 

 may be well," I said, "in your highness's high 

 position, but it will not suit your subjects. Si 

 vous sautcz, vous saulerez scut." 



" ' He came up to me in a fury, and I own 

 that I trembled, and that my knees shook. I 

 moved back, and he advanced until I was close 

 to the wall. Then we stood face to face. He 

 looked at me for some time, probably considering 

 whether he should give a sign for my being 

 strangled. At last he said, "Send an order to 

 the Englishman to come on shore to me." 



" ' I wrote to Napier to say that " the vice- 

 roy thought that the matter could be best ar- 

 ranged in a personal interview, and to request 

 that he would visit his highness at the palace." 

 The next day Napier came. Mehemet Ali had 

 had a night to reflect, and he had profited by it. 

 He seized him by both hands, placed him on his 

 right side on the corner of the divan, gave him 

 diamond-topped pipes, and coffee in gold cups, 

 and acceded without remonstrance to all his de- 

 mands, and in the same evening Napier was 

 wandering alone over the bazaars of Alexandria 

 in a round hat. I offered him a " tchaous," but 

 he said he had objects with which an attendant 

 would interfere. 



" ' Mehemet Ali,' he continued, ' was not a 

 safe master, but he was an agreeable one. He 

 was very generous ; he had a quick and correct 

 appreciation of character, and his conversation 

 was charming. 



" 'Although he did not learn to read until he 

 was forty-seven, he had more literary taste than 

 any Turk that I have known. He had every 

 book about Napoleon that he could find trans- 

 lated for him, and read them or had them read to 

 him with avidity. He made me translate the 

 " Esprit des Lois," and read it with great inter- 

 est. Of course I rather paraphrased than trans- 

 lated. He would not have understood Montes- 

 quieu's terse epigrams. 



" ' He told me one day that he had read much 

 about Machiavelli's "Principe," and begged me 

 to translate it for him. I set to work, and gave 



him the first day ten pages, and the next ten 

 pages more, and ten more the third ; but on the 

 fourth he stopped me. "I have read," he said, " all 

 that vou have given me of Machiavelli. I did not 

 find much that was new in your first ten pages, 

 but I hoped that it might improve ; but the next 

 ten were not better, and the last are mere com- 

 monplace. I see that I have nothing to learn 

 from Machiavelli. I know many more tricks 

 than he knew ; you need not translate any more 

 of him." 



" ' Though passionate, he was not cruel, nor 

 indifferent to human suffering. I Avent witli him 

 one day to one of his farms. He found that his 

 manager had been buying straw. He was very 

 angry. " A farm," he said, " ought to furnish 

 its own straw ; there must have been peculation 

 or mismanagement." He ordered the manager to 

 receive three hundred blows. I was shocked, and 

 ventured to remonstrate; but he kept repeating 

 that his farms must provide their own straw. 



" ' The next morning I found him on his di- 

 van in tears. "A dreadful thing," he said, "has 

 happened to me. The man whom yesterday I 

 ordered to be beaten is dead. You must find 

 out his family, give his widow a pension of one 

 hundred dollars a year, and provide for his 

 children, if he has left any." 



" 'Mehemet Ali's sons,' continued Artim, 'by 

 his eld Macedonian wife, Ibrahim, Ismail, and 

 Toussoun, were all men of ability, far superior to 

 those by his slaves, and they were much better 

 educated ; not that they had more learning, but 

 that, as they were born before he was pasha, they 

 escaped the flattery which has ruined the others. 

 Perhaps, however, power would have spoilt 

 them as it spoiled Abbas and Said. I once said 

 to Aehmed, 1 " You are an excellent man now, 

 but God knows what you will be when you are 

 viceroy ! " Abbas was good and Said was good in 

 j private life.' 



" ' Which had the most talent,' I asked, ' Ab- 

 bas or Said ? ' 



" ' Abbas,' he answered. ' And, though he 

 could speak only Turkish, he talked well and 

 wrote well his own language. Said speaks well 

 no language but French ; his Turkish is bad, and 

 he cannot write .at all. Abbas hated Europeans 

 and European education, but wished to diffuso 

 Turkish education. Said hates all education of 

 every kind. Said is the bolder man, Abbas was 

 timid. Mehemet Ali used to abuse him for his 

 indolence, and prophesied to him that, if he 

 passed all his time smoking and lolling on his 

 1 The heir-apparent in 1S56. 



