FUEXCII IN EGYPT.— CLOT BEY. 149 The number of the French here is much less than that of the two named nations. They are jesters, boasters, and charkitans, as usual ; their every second word is " chez nous," where all is better, more beautiful, and more perfect than any where else. One may, indeed, call them all adventurers ; but still mean or rascally tricks are by no means common among them, and their principal fault seems running into debt with their hosts and all who trust them. Their main supports are Soliman Pascha (the renegade, colonel Sives) in Syria, and Clot Bey. The latter has had higli success here : formerly a poor doctor in Marseilles (I was introduced to him in jMarseilles in 1822, by DiefFenbach), he is here a general. Ere he passed his forty-fifth year, he had, by his excesses, so broken down his constitution, that he was not unlike a good pathological preparation. Nothing but art and dress gave to the skeleton somewhat of tlie look of a man ; and he even now looks much more as if he belonged to the noble craft of the needle, than to the higli rank and office he claims and holds, which is nothing less than, with the rank and pay of general, President of the Conseil Gtneral de Sante in Egypt. With him rests the promotion or advancement of the medical men and apothecaries : that his countrymen get a good share of it is not at all unnatural, and cannot well be otherwise, however much others may grumble at it. To i>lace his own small and mean person in a conspicuous light, Clot Bey takes all possible means. la his great house, where his reception-chambers are furnished in the European fashion, he receives his friends with high patronising and protecting demeanour, doing all he can to impress upon his subordinates a fitting respect for his dignity. Small as are in truth his acquirements and medical information, — for his dissipated career has reduced to nothing his earlier studies,—still he acts the bold operator, and whatever his drugs may have done, his favourite knife has been vigorously wielded, and more men have been despatched by it to the other world, than he can ever answer for. In spite of his many failures, his self-conceit and arrogance have never for a moment left him. In his room stands a splendid library, in an equally splendid and ever-locked bookcase, all in full parade order, containing the ancient and later classics, and the most valuable works on medical subjects ; but all are new, M 4