governments, and Dilke knew that it would be a feather in his cap if he could obtain a renewal of the French concessions. So eager indeed was he
about it that I distinctly remember saying to myself, half aloud, as we parted at the Gare du Nord: "That man means to sell Egypt for his Commercial Treaty." Nor did the event prove it otherwise than exactly a true prophecy. It will be seen a little later that to the trivial advantage of obtaining certain small reductions of the import duties levied on English goods in France, the whole issue of liberty in Egypt, and to a large extent of Mohammedan reform throughout the world, was sacrificed by our Liberal Government. But of all this in its place.
My going at all to Cairo that winter was, as I have explained, somewhat fortuitous, providential I might almost say, if I was not afraid of giving my personal action in Egypt too much importance and too high a meaning. The ship which was to bring me out my servants and camp equipage, after nearly foundering in the Bay of Biscay, ran aground in the Canal and I was obliged to wait at Suez. I left it for Cairo, meaning to be there for a few days only. It had been reported in England that the Azhar Ulema had been won back from their ideas of reform and had adopted the Sultan's reactionary Pan-Islamic views. Half distrustful of the result, I sent a message to my first friend, at the University, Sheykh Mohammed Khalil, and then another curious accident occurred. In answer to my note begging him to come and see me at the Hôtel du Nil, where I had alighted, behold, instead of the young Alem whom I knew so well, another Azhar Sheykh of the same name, Sheykh Mohammed Khalil el Hajrasi, a perfect stranger who greeted me with a stranger's welcome. The newcomer had received my message, and, thinking it had come from a European merchant with whom he had dealings in connection with his native village in the Sherkieh, had followed close upon the heels of the messenger. This Mohammed el Hajrasi, though a man of less intrinsic worth than my real friend, was a person of some importance at the Azhar, and proved to be perhaps of even more interest to me at the