[1894 A Talk with the Khedive 167 



believe it, I was twenty days at Constantinople, and was watched all 

 the time by spies. He gave me two of his aides-de-camp, who were 

 constantly with me, even sleeping in my palace at night. Not once did 

 he discuss any political subject with me, though I several times brought 

 them forward when we were alone. Each time I did so he jumped 

 up and shut the windows, lest we should be overheard, but I could 

 get nothing from him. Even Mukhtar, who was there three months, 

 got no more than a lecture for not preventing the Cairo newspapers 

 from writing against him. He told Mukhtar to spend money — he 

 might pay each newspaper £1,500 a year — but Mukhtar refused to 

 have anything to do with it. Mukhtar will never be Grand Vizier. 

 All who serve the Sultan are expected to bow to the ground and say, 

 " Certainly, your Majesty." We shall never come to any good with him 

 for our Caliph and Emir el Mumenin.' 



Abbas asked me if I had had any news of a new revolt in Arabia, and 

 I told him I had seen paragraphs in the papers about it, but attached 

 little importance to them, as such paragraphs always appeared when 

 diplomatic pressure was being put at Constantinople, and just now the 

 Armenian question was being pushed forward. The. new friendship 

 between England and Russia boded no good for the Ottoman Empire. 

 He said : ' I have information that an agreement has been come to 

 between them by which Russia is to occupy Armenia.' This seems most 

 improbable, and with it the abandonment of Cyprus by us, as we could 

 not consent to it without retiring from the Cyprus Convention, which 

 guarantees the integrity of the Sultan's territory in Asia. As to his 

 visit to England he said: 'The King of the Belgians invited me to 

 stay with him, and I asked permission at Constantinople, but was told 

 I should make pretext to decline, and avoid all visits.' He is evi- 

 dently disgusted with the Sultan's timidity and narrow-mindedness, 

 but I noticed that he never once mentioned him by name, only as He. 



" From this we went on to home matters, and the way in which 

 Nubar's hand had been forced in the matter of the new arrangement 

 at the Ministry of the Interior. Nubar was old and stupid, he said, 

 and had been made to appear to demand it. I am inclined, however, 

 to suspect that this was merely Nubar's way of excusing himself 

 to his master. About the slave-trading case brought against Ali Pasha 

 Sherif, the Khedive told me that it was without doubt a trap laid for 

 him by Shaffer and the Slave Trade Bureau. Dr. Shafai was an ac- 

 complice, and the three slave women had been taught their parts. 

 When Shafai was condemned to hard labour he was not really sent 

 to Toura prison, but kept for a month at the caracol in comfortable 

 rooms upstairs. He, the Khedive, had been asked to pardon him, but 

 had said the law must take its course. Then they sent him to Toura, 

 but made him second doctor there. It was all a political intrigue to 



