k 290 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

and committed every atrocity which greed or lust or 1 fanaticism could suggest. The horrors of the Paris ! Commune were re-enacted in Alexandria after an ; Oriental fashion, though, happily, for one night only. / On the following morning a force of marines was j landed from the fleet, and order was once more : restored. ' Probably the real truth as to the relations between Tewfik and Arabi at this critical period never have been known, and never will be known. My own impression is that — to use a metaphor intelligible to all poker experts — they were in the position of two players, either of whom, in as far as his adversary was aware, might hold the joker in his hand. They were both playing for their fortunes, possibly for their lives.

They were both afraid of each other. Arabi, up to the day of his withdrawal from Alexandria, continued to surround the palace of Ramleh with troops, on whose loyalty to himself he could, or thought he could, rely.

But when it came to ordering the troops to act, as against the Khedive, his courage failed. Tewfik, on the other hand, was convinced that Arabi intended to get rid of him, but shrunk from any active opposition to his Mayor of the Palace, so long as he was not assured that England was determined to uphold his cause. Finally, Tewfik Pasha, if I may use the term, f bluffed the longest, and Arabi, on the Khedive's protest, i withdrew the troops which had been stationed around his palace. Upon the withdrawal of the regiments, by whom he was virtually kept prisoner, his Highness i