"In case you should be tempted to ask why I do not send this idle servant of mine, so cumbrous a travelling companion, to the right-about, back again to France, I must recal to your recollection a charming comedy, once performed at the Gymnase, called '_La Voyage de M. Perrichon_,' which is based entirely on the eminently true idea that our attachment for others depends more upon what we do for them than on what they do for us. You will, therefore, readily understand that, having, at the risk of my life, saved Joseph from death or slavery, he has become proportionately dear to me. "He amuses me, too, I confess, by his mixture of stupidity and self-sufficiency, and I must admit that when, perchance, he does condescend to wait on me, he does it, to use his own expression, in a most correct fashion. It is quite a treat, I assure you, in this country, almost a desert, in the midst of this semi-barbarian existence, and under the tent where I have just passed the night, to set eyes on a clean-shaven, neat-looking valet, with my clothes over his arm, my boots blacked and in his hand, and himself in readiness to give me my slippers. I forget Africa, Bedouins, mountains, camels, my tent, the board which serves me for a bed, and I imagine that I am in the heart of Paris, in the Rue Taitbout, in my own snug little bedroom. "To-day we have turned our backs upon the verdant plains, the splendid clumps of trees, and all the superb vegetation which has charmed us up to the present time. In the neighbourhood of the well of O-Back (the great well, I mean) the country is one mass of sand, the precursor of that twenty league desert which we have to traverse before we reach the valley of the Nile. Yes, my dear fellow, twenty leagues of sand, a fine and shifting sand, which the wind, according to its fancy, either leaves as level as a billiard-table, or heaps up in huge hillocks, and which the burning rays of the sun cause to sparkle like mingled particles of gold and silver. "For three days we passed through these gloomy solitudes, compelled half our time to travel on foot, for our horses sank into the sand up to their knees. Even the camels began to show signs of fatigue; they staggered under their loads, and their drivers, dragging themselves wearily along after them, in vain repeated their customary cry of 'hot, hot, hot,' meant to rouse and stimulate them to fresh exertions. "In spite of all these delays we reached the well of Abou-Tagger, and, after having come upon an alluvial plain, our eyes rest at last upon the Nile, to which, nearly a month ago, we said au revoir at Cairo, about three hundred miles north of our present position. We hasten to the stream with almost childish glee, and we seem as if we have once more met an old friend with whom we are destined to spend many a long day.