AFTER THE MUTINY. 315 own fortunes. The difference between the two men was that the latter owed his success to unworthy means, while the former owed it to an industry and energy, very rare amongst native officials. By hard work, frugal living, and independence of character, he made his way to the front in the public service.

Probably, from his Jewish ancestors, he possessed a certain faculty of organization and a dislike to disorder and wastefulness, which made him more of a man of mark in his own country than he would have been in Europe. In creed, he was a devout, almost a fanatical, Mussulman. On my visits to him, I hardly ever saw him without the rosary in his hands, by passing whose beads through his fingers a follower of the Prophet numbers the prayers he has to repeat daily in honour of Allah. In politics, he was a strong Conservative, averse to change of any kind, and a staunch partisan of personal rule. Still, both his religious and political proclivities were kept in bounds by shrewd, common sense, and by a faculty of seeing things as they are. He was at heart opposed to British intervention. But he realized that the British occupation was a necessity for the time being, and he was therefore prepared to act in accordance with any instructions given him by the British authorities, though not up to the point of pardoning Arabi for a crime which, in the East, at any rate, was universally regarded as rank treason and mutiny.

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