friends, to whom he was holding forth, between slow cigar-puffs,
on the squalor of the Arabs, the frightful thievery of the Sheiks,
the incompetency of his own special dragoman, and the mistake
people made in thinking the Egyptians themselves a fine race.

"They are tall, certainly," said Sir Chetwynd, surveying his
paunch, which lolled comfortably, and as it were by itself, in
front of him, like a kind of waistcoated air-balloon. "I grant you
they are tall. That is, the majority of them are. But I have seen
short men among them. The Khedive is not taller than I am. And the
Egyptian face is very deceptive. The features are often fine,--
occasionally classic,--but intelligent expression is totally
lacking."

Here Sir Chetwynd waved his cigar descriptively, as though he
would fain suggest that a heavy jaw, a fat nose with a pimple at
the end, and a gross mouth with black teeth inside it, which were
special points in his own physiognomy, went further to make up
"intelligent expression" than any well-moulded, straight, Eastern
type of sun-browned countenance ever seen or imagined.

"Well, I don't quite agree with you there," said a man who was
lying full length on one of the divans close by and smoking.
"These brown chaps have deuced fine eyes. There doesn't seem to be
any lack of expression in them. And that reminds me, there is at
fellow arrived here to-day who looks for all the world like an
Egyptian, of the best form. He is a Frenchman, though; a
Provencal,--every one knows him,--he is the famous painter, Armand
Gervase."