I06 TRAVELS rN UPPER 



4 



where, such as we know them to be, avaricious, 

 dexterous, insinuating, and low cheaters. Their 

 depredations are not like those of the Bedouins and 

 the other thieves of Egypt, neither committed with 

 manly intrepidity, nor with open violence : they 

 are, as in Europe, ingenious sharping tricks, offi- 

 cious over-reachings, which fill their own purse, 

 and, without making a noise, empty that of their 

 neighbour. Such are the Jews wherever I have 

 met with them ; in all places their indelible vices 

 of character appear, so long as they persist in keep- 

 ing within the line which they have drawn be- 

 tween themselves and other nations ; it is likewise 

 observable, that in all places they practise the same 

 methods, the same craft, the same knavery, the 

 real plagues of social order ; in a word, that same 

 insensibility, that same ingratitude, with which 

 they have recently repaid the generosity and mag- 

 nanimity of the French nation. 



Some Jewesses of Alexandria had, during my 

 residence there, opened their houses for the recep- 

 tion of Europeans ; they were deficient neither in 

 beauty nor wit : their society was by no means 

 without its allurements, and if there was ground 

 to accuse them of rather an immoderate appetite 

 for filthy lucre, the distinctive characteristic of the 

 male part of their nation, their imposition was at 

 least more palatable, their deceptions less pro- 

 voking, 



