ROME SUEZ PANAMA. 147 



and will you tell me ? " He had said to himself, " Here 

 is a man who leaves his family in Paris and comes all 

 the way to Khartoum to give me a piece of good 

 advice which had not occurred to me." This made 

 him so furious that he threw away his sword for fear 

 that he might forget himself and strike me with it. 

 He had known me since he was a child, and seeing 

 that his head was giving way he got rid of his weapon. 

 But he sent me away in order to be able to issue him- 

 self the grand decrees which have tranquillised the 

 country, and which restored to it a prosperity only 

 broken by the English expedition. When Gordon 

 was at Khartoum as governor the Viceroy informed 

 me that he had summoned him to Cairo to join the 

 Committee of Inquiry, of which I was president. I 

 said to him, "You are wrong. Gordon is a man of 

 great ability, very intelligent, very honest, and very 

 plucky, but he keeps all the Soudan accounts in his 

 pocket, written on small pieces of paper. All that he 

 pays out he puts in his right pocket, and all that he 

 receives in his left. He then makes up two bags and 

 sends them to Cairo, and money is sent back to him. 

 He is not the man to regulate the affairs of Egypt." 

 The Yiceroy then telegraphed to him to remain where 

 he was, but he was so active that he came all the same, 

 as he was administering the country in a very able 

 manner, according to the traditions left by Mohammed 

 Said. I asked him to peruse the explanations of these 

 decrees, which he had not read, and which I had got 



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