fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now
on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You've all seen him in that
picture by Horace Vernet,--'The Massacre of the Mameluks.' What a
handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn't give up the religion of my
fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration
required a surgical operation which I hadn't any fancy for. Besides,
nobody respects a renegade. Now if they had offered me a hundred
thousand francs a year, perhaps--and yet, no! The pacha did give me a
thousand talari as a present."

"How much is that?" asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all
his ears.

"Oh! not much. A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece. But
faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that
God-forsaken country, if country it is. I can't live now without
smoking a narghile twice a-day, and that's very costly."

"How did you find Egypt?" asked the count.

"Egypt? Oh! Egypt is all sand," replied Georges, by no means taken
aback. "There's nothing green but the valley of the Nile. Draw a green
line down a sheet of yellow paper, and you have Egypt. But those
Egyptians--fellahs they are called--have an immense advantage over us.
There are no gendarmes in that country. You may go from end to end of
Egypt, and you won't see one."

"But I suppose there are a good many Egyptians," said Mistigris.

"Not as many as you think for," replied Georges. "There are many more