It amused him to have the Sudanese soldiers
brought in and shown their 'black pug faces' in the palace
looking-glasses. He watched with a cynical sympathy the
impertinence of a turkey-cock that walked in his courtyard. He
made friends with a mouse who, 'judging from her swelled-out
appearance', was a lady, and came and ate out of his plate. The
cranes that flew over Khartoum in their thousands, and with their
curious cry, put him in mind of the poems of Schiller, which few
ever read, but which he admired highly, though he only knew them
in Bulwer's translation. He wrote little disquisitions on
Plutarch and purgatory, on the fear of death and on the sixteenth
chapter of the Koran. Then the turkey-cock, strutting with 'every
feather on end, and all the colours of the rainbow on his neck',
attracted him once more, and he filled several pages with his
opinions upon the immortality of animals, drifting on to a
discussion of man's position in the universe, and the infinite
knowledge of God. It was all clear to him. And yet--'what a
contradiction, is life! I hate Her Majesty's Government for their
leaving the Sudan after having caused all its troubles, yet I
believe our Lord rules heaven and earth, so I ought to hate Him,
which I (sincerely) do not.'
One painful thought obsessed him. He believed that the two
Egyptian officers, who had been put to death after the defeat in
March, had been unjustly executed.
Pages:
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406