Signor Drouetti had failed in all his attempts to raise it, nor was Mr. Salt a whit more successful. One day, while the latter was thinking what a pity it was that such a precious monument should be left to perish by decay, a stranger asked to speak with him. Mr. Salt desired him to be admitted; and immediately, despite his visitor's Oriental garb and long beard, he recognized the Hercules of Astley's. "What has brought you to Egypt?" asked the astonished consul. "You shall hear, sir," replied the Italian. "After having completed my engagement in London, I set out for Lisbon, where I was employed by the manager of the theatre of San Carlo to perform the part of Samson, in a scriptural piece which had been arranged expressly for me. From thence I went to Madrid, where I appeared with applause in the theatre Della Puerta del Sol. After having collected a tolerable sum of money, I resolved to come here. My first object is to induce the Pasha to adopt an hydraulic machine for raising the waters of the Nile." Mr. Salt then explained his wishes respecting the antiquities; but Belzoni, could not, he said, enter upon that till he had carried out his scheme of water-works. He was accompanied, he said in continuation, by Mrs. Belzoni, and by an Irish lad of the name of James Curtain; and had reached Alexandria just as the plague was beginning to disappear from that city, as it always does on the approach of St. John's day, when, as almost every body knows, "out of respect for the saint," it entirely ceases. The state of the country was still very alarming, yet Mr. Belzoni and his little party ventured to land, and performed quarantine in the French quarter; where, though really very unwell, they were wise enough to disguise their situation; "for the plague is so dreadful a scourge," he observed, "and operates so powerfully on human fears and human prejudices, that, during its prevalence, if a man be ill, he must be ill of the plague, and if he die, he must have died of the plague."