proceeded to describe. I believe he he had got an inkling, that I
intended to leave Cairo the next day. I told him, however, that I would
cheerfully go through any ceremonies he might propose. He next said, it
would be necessary that I should repeat the name of the spirit I called
for, eleven thousand times; and this I assured him I would painfully
perform. He then said, he was afraid at my age the operation would be
dangerous. I wonder whether the rogue meant that I was too young, or too
old, or too middle-aged; for I was exactly thirty-eight. Seeing that I
only pressed him the more, he took his fee and walked off, intimating
that there was no use in doing these things with Frangis.

I saw another instance in Cairo, of the way in which a story accumulates
by telling, and the degree in which even sensible Europeans by long
residence are induced to give into the beliefs they find around them.
The conversation turned one day on the power of charming serpents,
supposed to be inherent in certain descendants of the _Psylli_. One of
the Consular Staff immediately declared, that a most remarkable instance
of the fact had happened in the Consul-General's own courtyard the day
before. That one of those gifted men had come into the yard, and
declared he knew by his art that there were serpents in the stable; and
that he had immediately gone and summoned forth two snakes of the most
poisonous kind, which he seized in his hands and brought, in the
presence of the relator, to the Consular threshold. Now it happened to
me to see the whole of this scene. I was wandering about the Consul's
court, gazing at the curiosities scattered around, enough to have set up
any European museum with an Egyptian branch, and particularly, I
remember, at a lame mummy's crutch, found with him in his coffin, on
which it is possible the original owner hopped away from the plague of
frogs. An old rural Arab of respectable appearance was standing at the
Consul's door, holding in his hand the crooked stick which an Arab keeps