"--Tell him to bring another.--"_Now he has brought
another_."--Tell him to bring a third,--"_Now he has brought it_."--Tell
him to bring a fourth.--"_He has brought it_."--Tell him to bring the
captain of them all.--"_I see a great Sheik on horseback_."--Tell him to
bring the man that stole the spoon.--"_Now he has brought him_."--What
is he like?--"_He is a Frangi, poor-looking and mesquin_." After which
followed other points of personal description not remembered; but which
drew from the Staff the observation, that a European of exactly those
qualities had been about the house. We expressed our desire to be
introduced to the magician, and the Consul gravely intimated it might
hurt the prejudices of his wife, as being a Catholic; to the great mirth
of the beautiful Consuless when she was told of it, who, though a
Catholic and an Italian, declared she was the only person in the family
that set all the magicians in Egypt at defiance.
Having some time afterwards established ourselves in a house of our own,
on the edge of the garden of the Austrian Consulate (as I remember by
the token that a Turkish officer who had been taking his evening walk of
meditation, very gravely opened the window from the garden, put in first
one leg of his huge trousers and then the other, and strode into the
room followed by his pipe-bearer, as being the shortest cut into the
street; though I must do him the justice to say he laughed and was very
conversable, when I brought him up with a salam and a cup of coffee, by
way of demonstrating there was somebody in the house besides the Arab
owner), we sent for the magician.
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