- In A Moment Of
Calmness And Deliberation He Dares Not, But When For A While He Has
Writhed Under The Torture Of Suspense, A Sudden Strength Of Will
Drives Him To Seek And Know His Fate.
He touches the gland, and
finds the skin sane and sound, but under the cuticle there lies a
small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as he pushes it.
Oh!
but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of death? Feel
the gland of the other arm; there is not the same lump exactly, yet
something a little like it: have not some people glands naturally
enlarged? - would to Heaven he were one! So he does for himself the
work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, does
indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been
so well begun; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the
victim, and lets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of
people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent.
Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and
sees the sun-dial that stood in his childhood's garden; sees part
of his mother, and the long-since-forgotten face of that little
dead sister (he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for all the
church bells are ringing); he looks up and down through the
universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of cotton,
and cotton eternal - so much so that he feels, he knows, he swears
he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard table would not
slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it
is not - it's a cue that won't move - his own arm won't move - in
short, there's the devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine,
and perhaps the next night but one he becomes the "life and the
soul" of some squalling jackal family who fish him out by the foot
from his shallow and sandy grave.
Better fate was mine. By some happy perverseness (occasioned
perhaps by my disgust at the notion of being received with a pair
of tongs) I took it into my pleasant head that all the European
notions about contagion were thoroughly unfounded; that the plague
might be providential or "epidemic" (as they phrase it), but was
not contagious; and that I could not be killed by the touch of a
woman's sleeve, nor yet by her blessed breath. I therefore
determined that the plague should not alter my habits and
amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolve from
impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the
most prudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits which I was thus
enabled to retain discouraged the yellow-winged angel, and
prevented him from taking a shot at me. I, however, so far
respected the opinion of the Europeans, that I avoided touching
when I could do so without privation or inconvenience. This
endeavour furnished me with a sort of amusement as I passed through
the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to place in the
city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are always in
readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly
(until one of them died of the plague) waited at my door upon the
chance of being wanted. I found this way of moving about
exceedingly pleasant, and never attempted any other. I had only to
mount my beast, and tell my donkey-boy the point for which I was
bound, and instantly I began to glide on at a capital pace. The
streets of Cairo are not paved in any way, but strewed with a dry
sandy soil, so deadening to sound, that the footfall of my donkey
could scarcely be heard. There is no trottoir, and as you ride
through the streets you mingle with the people on foot. Those who
are in your way, upon being warned by the shouts of the donkey-boy,
move very slightly aside, so as to leave you a narrow lane, through
which you pass at a gallop. In this way you glide on delightfully
in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced or
stopped for a moment. It seems to you that it is not the donkey
but the donkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through
pleasant groups, and air that feels thick with the fragrance of
burial spice. "Eh! Sheik, Eh! Bint, - reggalek, - "shumalek, &c.
&c. - O old man, O virgin, get out of the way on the right - O
virgin, O old man, get out of the way on the left - this Englishman
comes, he comes, he comes!" The narrow alley which these shouts
cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go on
for a long way without touching a single person, and my endeavours
to avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in my loneliness,
which was not without interest. If I got through a street without
being touched, I won; if I was touched, I lost - lost a deuce of
stake, according to the theory of the Europeans; but that I deemed
to be all nonsense - I only lost that game, and would certainly win
the next.
There is not much in the way of public buildings to admire at
Cairo, but I saw one handsome mosque, to which an instructive
history is attached. A Hindustanee merchant having amassed an
immense fortune settled in Cairo, and soon found that his riches in
the then state of the political world gave him vast power in the
city - power, however, the exercise of which was much restrained by
the counteracting influence of other wealthy men. With a view to
extinguish every attempt at rivalry the Hindustanee merchant built
this magnificent mosque at his own expense.
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