158 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

never disclosed. In the course of a few hours he came back in a state of such violent physical and mental agitation, that he had to be placed at once under medical care, and remained in confinement for three months before he recovered his senses. These and many similar reports, or rather the interpretations placed upon them, may be utterly baseless. I give them only as illustrating the state of popular agitation in Cairo at the time of this catastrophe. The one thing certain is that after the death of the Mufettish, whenever and however it may have occurred, nothing was ever heard again of the alleged conspiracy against the dynasty. The secret, if secret there was, lies buried with Ismail Sadyk along the banks, or in the waters, of the Nile.

It is right to add that Mr. Goschen, when, on his return to London, he addressed a meeting of the Egyptian bondholders, seems to have been of opinion that the Khedive was not open to any suspicion of having benefited by the malpractices of his confidential ag?nt and adviser. In this speech the Mufettish was depicted " as the main author or instrument of Egypt's great financial maladministration." Mr. Goschen accused the ex-minister, no doubt, with perfect truth, " of having sold the wheat, and cotton paid in kind for. State taxes before delivery, and of having re-sold the same products a second time so as to receive the price twice over; with having carried on, on his own account, an enormous bear operation in Egyptian State stocks, shortly after their rise upon the purchase of the Suez Canal shares by the British