When I Went To See The Pyramids Of Sakkara I Was The Guest Of A Noble Old Fellow, An Osmanlee, Whose Soft Rolling Language It Was A Luxury To Hear After Suffering, As I Had Suffered Of Late, From The Shrieking Tongue Of The Arabs.

This man was aware of the European ideas about contagion, and his first care therefore was to assure me that not a single instance of plague had occurred in his village.

He then inquired as to the progress of the plague at Cairo. I had but a bad account to give. Up to this time my host had carefully refrained from touching me out of respect to the European theory of contagion, but as soon as it was made plain that he, and not I, would be the person endangered by contact, he gently laid his hand upon my arm, in order to make me feel sure that the circumstance of my coming from an infected city did not occasion him the least uneasiness. In that touch there was true hospitality.

Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or rather, I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and commonly called Levantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the Desert I had been so long alone, that the prospect of speaking to somebody at Cairo seemed almost a new excitement. I felt a sort of consciousness that I had a little of the wild beast about me, but I was quite in the humour to be charmingly tame, and to be quite engaging in my manners, if I should have an opportunity of holding communion with any of the human race whilst at Cairo.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 212 of 325
Words from 58346 to 58633 of 89094