maintained in law, Ismaïl's debts were personal not public ones, and should have been so treated. Cave's weakness on this point was the beginning of the political intervention in favour of the bondholders, and his report led by a necessary logic to the recognition of Ismaïl's debt as a public obligation. Sir Rivers Wilson, who immediately followed him, though a far abler man, was equally inexperienced, and was at that time chosen, I believe, principally for his knowledge of the French language. I knew him intimately, and I knew also, but in a less degree, Cave; and I continued in correspondence with Wilson for some years and am well acquainted with all his Egyptian doings.
My last recollection that winter at Cairo is of a barbaric banquet offered by the Khedive to Mr. Cave and the members of his commission, to which I was by accident invited. It was given in the Viceregal Kiosque at the Pyramids, and was one of those extravagant entertainments Ismaïl was accustomed to dazzle European eyes with, nor was there anything wanting to point the contrast between the wealth of the entertainer and the poverty of those at whose expense it was really given. The table was spread for us literally under the eyes of a starving multitude of peasants, the very peasants Mr. Cave was there to save from ruin. Yet none of us seemed to feel the incongruity of it all. We feasted elaborately, and drank champagne of the best, and went our way, and it is only now that, with a better knowledge of the whole circumstances, I recall the real character of the scene and recognize it for what it in all verity was with its waste and surrounding misery, a true presentment of the twin causes of the coming revolution.