.• THE PURSE OF FORTUNATUS. 69 to the Equatorial lakes, if not to the Zambesi. I\ think it probable that both the military expeditions ) and the lavish outlay on public works to which I have / -referred, were mainly due to a desire to impress public I J \' opinion in Europe with an idea of the greatness 7 ' of the Khedive's fortune and the magnitude of his ( resources. The necessity of keeping up appearances is the first lesson learnt by any one who lives beyond his means, and who has not the power, even if he has the wish, to reduce his expenditure. I cannot suppose that, in the course of the years when he was piling debt upon debt, loan upon loan, and liability upon liability, a man so acute as Ismail Pasha, could not have contemplated the possibility that, one day or other, his creditors might get tired of making fresh advances. Given such a possibility, fit was obviously") his policy to keep up the legend of his fabulous wealth ( and inexhaustible resources till such time as the vast enterprises on which he had embarked should begin to \ return a profitj At the same time, it would be an injustice to Ismail to suppose that the only motive of his lavish expenditure was to throw dust in the eyes of his .

creditors. After all, to employ a French expression, for which I know of no English equivalent, il voyait grand. His ambitions, however much they were identified with his own personal aggrandizement, were still not devoid of a certain grandeur. He saw himself in his mind's eye the greatest sovereign on the African continent. He looked forward to the day when, in the event of the impending collapse of the Ottoman Empire,