You've all seen him in that picture by Horace Vernet,--'The Massacre of the Mameluks.' What a handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn't give up the religion of my fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration required a surgical operation which I hadn't any fancy for.

Besides, nobody respects a renegade.

Now if they had offered me a hundred thousand francs a year, perhaps--and yet, no! The pacha did give me a thousand talari as a present." "How much is that ?" asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all his ears.
"Oh! not much.

A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece.
But faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that God-forsaken country, if country it is.

I can't live now without smoking a narghile twice a-day, and that's very costly." "How did you find Egypt ?" asked the count.
"Egypt?
Oh! Egypt is all sand," replied Georges, by no means taken aback.