3 i2 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



the miracles of ancient days. You possess in the 

 highest degree the secret of all greatness, the art of 

 making yourself beloved. You have succeeded in 

 forming out of incoherent masses a small but compact 

 army, in which the best qualities of the French race 

 have appeared in all their eclat. Thousands of men 

 have found in you their conscience, their reason of 

 being, their principle of nobility or of moral renova- 

 tion. 



" The amount of valour, bravery, and resources 

 of every kind which you have expended in this 

 struggle is something prodigious. What a fund of 

 good humour, more especially, must you not have 

 needed to answer patiently the many puerile objec- 

 tions which were raised: the moving sands of the 

 desert, the bottomless mud in Lake Mensaleh, the 

 threats of an universal deluge brought about by the 

 difference in level of the two seas ! During the first 

 two years your activity knew no bounds ; during that 

 time you travelled twenty-five thousand miles a year, 

 more than the distance round the world. You had to 

 convince Europe, especially England, our great and 

 dear rival. You conformed your habits to those of 

 the country. You went from town to town, with only 

 one companion, taking with you enormous maps, 

 loaded with pamphlets and prospectuses. When you 

 arrived in a towiij you went to the mayor or the prin- 

 cipal person of the locality, to offer him the chairman- 

 ship of the meeting ; then you selected your secre- 



