word"--a satisfactory character to leave behind. In the evening the governor (Mudir) came to see me with a tail of employés and, if you please, a pocket-handkerchief, of which he was not a little conscious, holding it in his hand rolled into a neat tube, which he occasionally drew with dignity across the basis of the official nose. The Consul for France and Prussia also came and made his salaam. My borrowed and temporary plumes have been of real use to somebody here, for the Mudir, hearing that an Englishman (whom he erroneously supposed to be somebody) was on board a viceroy's steamer, immediately gave the crew two months' pay--an alacrity not sufficiently often displayed in this country, if I am not much misinformed. The dancing-girls who came to entertain us in the evening were no doubt better than those of Lougsor, though, with one exception, at least as ugly; but some of them were gorgeously attired (from the dancing-dog point of view), and all were a mass of gold necklaces and coins and glittering headgear, which produced at a certain distance and in the doubtful light a prodigiously fine effect of colour. The dancing was a little more varied than that of the Lougsor women, chiefly, no doubt, because they got more to drink; but, _en somme_, I am confirmed in my first impression that it is an eminently ugly performance, though a very remarkable gymnastic feat. Of course a graceful and good-looking girl may do a good deal to redeem it by personal charm, and this was in some degree the case with Zehneb, who is a noted dancer and the _fine fleur_ of the profession. She is pretty though coarse in feature, and not without grace; but has a semi-European smack about her dress and ways that spoils her in my eyes--hers, by-the-bye, are splendid. Just as the "fantasia" was at its height, a ragged, dust-soiled, old beggar came, chattering and grinning, into the room, and at once installed himself, uninvited but unhindered, on the divan, from which comfortable post he proceeded to witness the performance and apparently thoroughly to enjoy his evening. The contrast between his beggar's garb and the scrupulously cleanly attire of his neighbours was very curious. He is a fakeer, as I am told; everybody feeds him, no doors are closed to him; he is not, I believe, exactly an idiot, but is certainly in his second childhood--"rimbambito," as the Italians say. On one side of him squatted a sweet little brown girl, Achmet's daughter, of about five or six, in a pink cotton shift and with anklets hanging about her little naked feet. On the other side, a little further off, was an umber-coloured dancing-girl, with bright bold eyes painted round with black, covered with a mass of gold coins on her head, in her hair, on her ears, and round her neck, and