152 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

and popular Parisian financier, but belonging to a very different category of the haute finance from that of his English colleague, was gladly approved Iby the British Government, but no official sanction 'of any kind was given to his mission. A comic I element, as Lord Milner observes in his pleasant description of Egypt as " the land of paradox," is always associated with the gravest events of its contemporary history, and to any one who, in common with the present writer, has had the advantage of knowing personally the two members of the Goschen-Joubert mission, there is something humorous in the conjunction together of two men who were in all respects so different to each other, as the jovial, genial, not over scrupulous, and certainly not too refined French financier, who was up to his neck in every sort of speculation, good, bad, and indifferent, and the cautious, high-minded English gentleman, imbued with all the traditions of Oxford and all the ideas of old-fashioned city capitalists.

However, unlike as they were in every other respect, the two delegates had this much in common, that they were both men of strong common sense, and both, on this occasion, equally anxious to do their best for the bondholders whose interests they were charged with defending. The accounts of the Egyptian Treasury were again submitted to a second and a more exhausting examination than the one which Mr. Cave had been in a position to conduct, and the result of this examination was that Messrs.