Eothen [84]
So he does for himself the work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, does indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the victim, and lets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and sees the sun-dial that stood in his childhood's garden; sees part of his mother, and the long-since-forgotten face of that little dead sister (he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells are ringing); he looks up and down through the universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of cotton, and cotton eternal - so much so that he feels, he knows, he swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard table would not slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it is not - it's a cue that won't move - his own arm won't move - in short, there's the devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine, and perhaps the next night but one he becomes the "life and the soul" of some squalling jackal family who fish him out by the foot from his shallow and sandy grave.
Better fate was mine. By some happy perverseness (occasioned perhaps by my disgust at the notion of being received with a pair of tongs) I took it into my pleasant head that all the European notions about contagion were thoroughly unfounded; that the plague might be providential or "epidemic" (as they phrase it), but was not contagious; and that I could not be killed by the touch of a woman's sleeve, nor yet by her blessed breath. I therefore determined that the plague should not alter my habits and amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolve from impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the most prudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits which I was thus enabled to retain discouraged the yellow-winged angel, and prevented him from taking a shot at me. I, however, so far respected the opinion of the Europeans, that I avoided touching when I could do so without privation or inconvenience. This endeavour furnished me with a sort of amusement as I passed through the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to place in the city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are always in readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly (until one of them died of the plague) waited at my door upon the chance of being wanted. I found this way of moving about exceedingly pleasant, and never attempted any other. I had only to mount my beast, and tell my donkey-boy the point for which I was bound, and instantly I began to glide on at a capital pace. The streets of Cairo are not paved in any way, but strewed with a dry sandy soil, so deadening to sound, that the footfall of my donkey could scarcely be heard. There is no TROTTOIR, and as you ride through the streets you mingle with the people on foot. Those who are in your way, upon being warned by the shouts of the donkey-boy, move very slightly aside, so as to leave you a narrow lane, through which you pass at a gallop. In this way you glide on delightfully in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced or stopped for a moment. It seems to you that it is not the donkey but the donkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through pleasant groups, and air that feels thick with the fragrance of burial spice. "Eh! Sheik, Eh! Bint, - reggalek, - "shumalek, &c. &c. - O old man, O virgin, get out of the way on the right - O virgin, O old man, get out of the way on the left - this Englishman comes, he comes, he comes!" The narrow alley which these shouts cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go on for a long way without touching a single person, and my endeavours to avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in my loneliness, which was not without interest. If I got through a street without being touched, I won; if I was touched, I lost - lost a deuce of stake,
Better fate was mine. By some happy perverseness (occasioned perhaps by my disgust at the notion of being received with a pair of tongs) I took it into my pleasant head that all the European notions about contagion were thoroughly unfounded; that the plague might be providential or "epidemic" (as they phrase it), but was not contagious; and that I could not be killed by the touch of a woman's sleeve, nor yet by her blessed breath. I therefore determined that the plague should not alter my habits and amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolve from impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the most prudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits which I was thus enabled to retain discouraged the yellow-winged angel, and prevented him from taking a shot at me. I, however, so far respected the opinion of the Europeans, that I avoided touching when I could do so without privation or inconvenience. This endeavour furnished me with a sort of amusement as I passed through the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to place in the city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are always in readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly (until one of them died of the plague) waited at my door upon the chance of being wanted. I found this way of moving about exceedingly pleasant, and never attempted any other. I had only to mount my beast, and tell my donkey-boy the point for which I was bound, and instantly I began to glide on at a capital pace. The streets of Cairo are not paved in any way, but strewed with a dry sandy soil, so deadening to sound, that the footfall of my donkey could scarcely be heard. There is no TROTTOIR, and as you ride through the streets you mingle with the people on foot. Those who are in your way, upon being warned by the shouts of the donkey-boy, move very slightly aside, so as to leave you a narrow lane, through which you pass at a gallop. In this way you glide on delightfully in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced or stopped for a moment. It seems to you that it is not the donkey but the donkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through pleasant groups, and air that feels thick with the fragrance of burial spice. "Eh! Sheik, Eh! Bint, - reggalek, - "shumalek, &c. &c. - O old man, O virgin, get out of the way on the right - O virgin, O old man, get out of the way on the left - this Englishman comes, he comes, he comes!" The narrow alley which these shouts cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go on for a long way without touching a single person, and my endeavours to avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in my loneliness, which was not without interest. If I got through a street without being touched, I won; if I was touched, I lost - lost a deuce of stake,