208 Abbas and the Sultan [j^S 



Din he had been followed so closely that he had turned on the spy and 

 beaten him, and had sent a message to the palace that if he was thus 

 annoyed again he would shoot his persecutors. 



" At last a day of audience was fixed with the Sultan for him to 

 say ' good-bye.' But after being kept waiting for an hour, Osman 

 Pasha came to him and began to talk about the Thasos plan, and to 

 try and dissuade him. At this he lost patience, and asked Osman 

 straight whether he had been sent with the message from the Sultan, 

 and, on his admitting it, he spoke his whole mind. ' I told him,' 

 said the Khedive, ' that I was tired of the Sultan's way of treating me, 

 that I had been not yet four years on the throne, and I had come three 

 times to Constantinople 'to see him, which was more than any of my 

 predecessors had done, and yet he had not spoken to me a reasonable 

 word. My great-great-grandfather, I told him, Mohammed AH, had 

 never gone to Constantinople, though he was near it once, by way of 

 Nezim and Koniah. My great-grandfather Ibrahim had never been, 

 'though he had a stronger army than the Sultan's. My father was 

 eleven years on the throne, and he never went. I alone went, to do 

 the Sultan pleasure. I even, to please him, gave up last year my visit 

 to England. Her Majesty the Queen, who is Empress of India and 

 300 millions of subjects, and on whose dominions the sun never sets, 

 had done me the honor of inviting me, and I had accepted the invita- 

 tion ; yet, on account of a miserable bit of paper, a telegram from Con- 

 stantinople, I broke my engagement and went to the Sultan instead. I 

 am tired of this. You may tell 'the Sultan that this year I will not go 

 to Thasos, but for the future I shall know how to regulate my conduct 

 towards him. While talking thus — and I never talked so strongly 

 in my life — Nuri Bey joined us, and he and Osman were horror- 

 struck at my words, and shook with fear, and wen't at once to the Sul- 

 tan, who sent for me and apologized and loaded me with civilities. 

 But I told him that it was no case for apologies, tha't I understood now 

 what his diplomacy was, and that I should return to my own country, 

 and forget as far as possible that I stood to him in the rela'tion of a sub- 

 ject. And so it has been. From that day to this I have cut the Sul- 

 tan's name out of my prayer; I have never been to the mosque where 

 'the prayer for the Sultan is made, and, when I pray in my own mosque 

 at Koubba, my chaplain omits the Sultan's name. We pray for " the 

 welfare of Islam and all believers, but not for those (he quoted the 

 words in Arabic) who are bringing Islam to its ruin." 



" I am not sure that I have quoted the Khedive quite verbally, but 

 this is the sense of his words. He spoke with animation, and told the 

 story admirably. He told me also that he had seen Abdallah Nadim 1 

 at Constantinople, and that he was allowing him to return to Egypt 



1 See " Secret History." 



