Last week, in the beautiful palace built by Egypt for the Exposition,
there was arranged a sort of entertainment for the Viceroy, to which we
were invited with the Prince and Princess Metternich. This palace is a
large, square, white building of oriental ornamentation and architecture,
with a courtyard in the center, where we were received by the Khedive and
his suite. A fountain was playing in the middle of the courtyard of
marble, surrounded by palmettos and plants of every description. A band of
Turkish musicians were seated cross-legged in one of the corners playing
on their weird instruments, and making what they seemed to think was
music. We sat in low basket-chairs, our feet resting on the richest of
oriental rugs, and admired the graceful movements of the dancing-girls,
who had not more space than an ordinary square rug to dance upon. There
were also some jugglers, who performed the most marvelous and
incomprehensible tricks with only an apparently transparent basket, from
which they produced every imaginable object.
Coffee _à la Turque_ was served in small cups with their silver filigree
undercup, and Turkish paste flavored with attar of roses, and nauseatingly
sweet, was passed about, with a glass of water to wash it down. Also
cigarettes of every description were lavishly strewn on all the little
tables, and hovering about us all the time were the thin-legged, turbaned
black menials with baggy silk trousers and bright silk sashes.
Everything was so Oriental that, had I stayed there a little longer, I
should not have been surprised to see myself sitting cross-legged on a
divan smoking a _narghile_. I said as much as this to the Khedive, who
said, in his funny pigeon-French-English, "Alas! Were it so!"
I cast my eyes down and put on my _sainte-ni-touche_ air, which at times I
can assume, and as I looked at his Highness's dusky suite, who did not
look over and above immaculate, in spite of the Mussulman's Mussulmania
for washing, I thanked my stars that it "were not so."
The interpreter who was on duty said to Prince Metternich: "Mussulmans
drink no wine, nor does the Prophet allow them to eat off silver.
Therefore, to ease our consciences" (he said, _mettre nos consciences à
couvert_), "we tell them that the silver plates on which they eat are
_iron_ plated with silver. They think the forks are also iron, otherwise
they would eat with their fingers."
The interpreter added that Mussulmans did not think the Parisian
newspapers very interesting, because they contained so few crimes and no
murders worth mentioning. What an insight this gives of the condition of
their country and the tenor of their papers!
We took our leave of the amiable Khedive, who expressed the hope that we
would soon meet again.
Before his departure from Paris there came a package with the card of one
of his gentlemen, begging me, _de la part de Monseigneur_, to accept the
"accompanying souvenir." The package contained two enameled bracelets
of the finest oriental work in red-and-green, studded with emeralds. He
sent an equally gorgeous brooch to the Princess Metternich.