220 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

position. Salutes were fired from the batteries he had erected and from the men-of-war lying in the harbour he had created. Of any popular manifestation in his favour, there was little or none. His reign had not been calculated to enlist the sympathies of his people ; but even if this had been otherwise, he would have been allowed to quit his kingdom in silence. In Egypt, even more than elsewhere in the East, the Arab proverb holds good, that "a wise man will always dance before the monkey, but only so long as the monkey rides on horseback."

From the time the low sand-dunes which surround Alexandria had faded from his sight, Ismail never set eyes again upon the country which, after a fashion of his own, he loved so well. As I shall have occasion to relate hereafter, he exercised indirectly a considerable influence on the course of Egyptian politics. But his direct connection with the country ceased entirely with his departure. It may therefore be as well to say here what little I have to say of the fifteen weary years he passed in exile.

It has been my fortune in life to have seen a good deal of many exiled kings, princes, potentates, and statesmen. However they might differ in other respects, they all shared one hope and one delusion. The hope was to return to the country where they had ruled in the days of their glory ; the delusion was an unshakable belief, that their country was longing for their return. Ismail, though a shrewd man of the world, with a very low estimate of human nature, cherished