1894] H™ Quarrel with Cromer 137 



Cromer said they were both insignificant. In the end Abbas had given 

 way about Nnbar, and there was a compromise about the rest of the 

 Cabinet. Fakri goes to Public Instruction, Mustafa Fehmi to the 

 War Office, Mazlum to Finance, and Butros, who, Abbas said, had 

 betrayed the secrets of the late Cabinet all through to Lord C, to 

 Foreign Affairs. He asked me what I thought of it. I said that I 

 had no confidence in Nubar, but recommended him as soon as he was 

 tired of Nubar to have back a Nationalist Ministry, strengthening it by 

 adding some European he could trust for Foreign Affairs. He prom- 

 ised to remember my advice. 



" The Khedive then talked of his camel ride to Suez, and lastly con- 

 sulted me about going to England this next summer. I said I would 

 try and find out for him what line would be taken there about his 

 reception, and especially by the Prince of Wales, and let him know. 

 He begged me to write to him. As to publishing anything he would 

 leave that to my discretion. Then he made the old Soudani sit near 

 and talked about Zebeyr, who is evidently out of his favour, and so 

 after about an hour he got up and took me to see his camels, and then 

 with a few more words about my writing to him we said good-bye. 



" Although extremely friendly and nice to me personally, I confess 

 that he impressed me less favourably this time than before. He has 

 clearly made a dreadful hash of things, and seems to attach more im- 

 portance to the getting rid of Kitchener than to the larger political 

 questions. I can see that he is in the hands of the intriguers that 

 surround him, and that he is no match for Cromer, who has won the 

 game against him through the Khedive's own mistakes. Not that 

 Nubar's appointment is much advantage to English policy, for Nubar 

 is in French interests, but Lord Cromer has certainly won a personal 

 victory. The future to me looks very black. The young man has 

 lost something of his frankness, and of his first sublime self-confidence, 

 which was his strength, and I fear he will degenerate into the shifty 

 intriguer his father was before him. Still he is more manly than 

 that, and with honest advice may yet go well. But who is to give 

 it him? 



" iSth April.— Our Mowled of Sheykh Obeyd. A calf was killed 

 for the labourers in the garden, and the girls and those who have been 

 at work on the new house, and a lamb for the Sheykhs, with recitations 

 and chauntings in the evening. [This was a religious festival held 

 annually in our garden at the tomb of Sheykh Obeyd.] " 



The Bee Birds have been wonderful this year, three or four hundred 

 roosting every night in the trees near the house. I cannot quite make 

 out what they do in the day-time, for they all disappear from the gar- 

 den, coming back about half an hour before sunset. Most of these 

 birds travel north at this time of year, but a few stay on during the 



