successors will continue to become “fatigable and fond of leisure.”’ * * * * * For I had already decided to resign. So had the professor of Latin, my only English colleague. And the one-legged professor of French Literature, who was an honest man. The others stayed on. The Egyptians were most hospitable. I attended one heavy banquet, at the Semiramis Hotel, given by the Minister of Education. Tall Sudanese waiters dressed in red robes served a succession of the most magnificent dishes that I have seen anywhere, even on the films. I remember particularly a great model of the Cairo Citadel in ice, with the doors and windows filled with caviare which one scooped out with a golden Moorish spoon. I heard recently that this banquet, which must have cost thousands, has not yet been paid for. I found little to do in Egypt (since I had no intention of mixing with the British official class, joining the golf club, or paying official calls) but eat coffee-ices at Groppi’s, visit the open-air cinemas and sit at home in our flat at Heliopolis and get on with writing. My sister, who lived near, continued sisterly. During the season of the Khamsin, a hot wind which sent the temperature up on one occasion to 113 degrees in the shade, I put the finishing touches to a book called _Lars Porsena, or The Future of Swearing and Improper Language_. I also worked on a study of the English ballad. The best thing that I saw in Egypt was the noble face of old King Seti the Good unwrapped of its mummy-cloths in the Cairo Museum. Nearly all the best things in Egypt were dead. The funniest thing was a French bedroom farce played in Arabic by Syrian actors in a native theatre. The men and women of the cast had, for religious reasons, to keep on opposite sides of the stage. They sang French songs (in translation), varying the tunes with the quarter-tones and shrieks and trills of their own music. The audience talked all the time and ate peanuts, oranges, sunflower-seeds and heads of lettuces.