you have plunged the knife into the bosom of your mother. Did it
never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good
work--the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the
lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug,
the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for
the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow
blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet
growth of law and justice, the new industries started--did not all
these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great
genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things
that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake? Giving with one hand
freely, did your soul not misgive you when you took away with the
other?

"When you tore down my work, you were tearing down your own; for,
more than the material help I thought you gave in planning and
shaping reforms, ay, far more than all, was the feeling in me which
helped me over many a dark place, that I had you with me, that I was
not alone. I trusted you, Nahoum. A life for a life you might have
had for the asking; but a long torture and a daily weaving of the
web of treachery--that has taken more than my life; it has taken
your own, for you have killed the best part of yourself, that which
you did with me; and here in an ever-narrowing circle of death I say
to you that you will die with me. Power you have, but it will
wither in your grasp. Kaid will turn against you; for with my
failure will come a dark reaction in his mind, which feels the cloud
of doom drawing over it. Without me, with my work falling about his
ears, he will, as he did so short a time ago, turn to Sharif and
Higli and the rest; and the only comfort you will have will be that
you destroyed the life of him who killed your brother. Did you love