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[NO'.? rm:w pvr.LI.~r.En.] SHORT STORIES BY WORLD-FAMOUS AUTHORS. A Modem Timon, A SKETCH FROM LIFE. BY HAMILTON AIDE. Author of Passages from the Life of a Lady," "Carr of Carriyon," Poet and Peer," &c. In looking back to the many strange characters I have met in my intercourse with men of all tries, during a diversified journey through '*fe, I can recall none mors singular than the per- $on I shall name Sigismund, whoso acquaintance I Made in Cairo, lorn" years ago. In what this shigularity consisted, and how it fashioned his career, will be apparent when I transcribe por- tions of conversation which I had with him Occasionally during the short time we were together. But, in order that -those who are at ,ict trouble to read these pages may form some lecture of the man, physically, I will describe the effect he woduced upon me thf) first tiiriH we ifiet. It \va,s in a low cafe, where I had been drawn fioui the street by curiosity to watch—rather than listen to-a recitation, half-song-, naif-poem, Accompanied by » monstrous twanging and scraping of "instruments, the chief performer being a humorous fellow, whose 1 acini expres- I!lrm f.nJ gestures evinced a dramatic Rapacity which had its reward in the 'o'.v gurgle of laughter, and the frequent *pi>lau-w wherewith his narrative was greeted, fe It was a curious sight—that nwss of tarbouches nnd turbans, with the upturned olive faces beneath them, the diir. light from a single oil latllp fla-hing now and again on their white teeth and v,1e:tmmg eyes the fiery end., of the Cigarettes each man held between his lip", burn- lilg hke so many stars through the thick atmos- phere of the room. There wits but one European (at least, I took him fer such) in the place, and he sat beside mo. He was a fair man, inclining to redness his hair closely cropped, his mous- tache long and bushy his face otherwise clean shaved. In rejxj.se, his fiue profile and stone-blue eyep—which, I found later, became like blue diamonds when he was exoitrd-Iiis curious bitter-sweet smile, exploding into a thunderous If-ligh, now and again, impressed me greatly, An(i reminded me of a certain portrait by Titian, in the Pitti Palace, full of wonderful possibilities —a portrait that has always a reused my cnriosity. 'What manner of man was this ? Evidently he Understood every word that fell from the Arab tale-teller, and enjoyed it. Presently he drew a Pencil from his and some letters, on the "ack of one of which he began hu.riedly to sketch the head and action of the performer. In doing this, ray eye caught the word "Esquire" tlh the letter. It confirmed my suspicion as to i the owner's nationality. The first part of the tale ended-jusfc then—or it trlay have been one short tale, complete and the Applause was succeeded by a lull. borne went out, but I saw my neighbour had no intention of moving. I turned to him and sa. d You follow this Arabic story perfectly, sir Is it amusing ? j He looked me full in the face and replied, It Nothing daunted, I said Would you mind telling me what it is all about?" "You would probably not understand, if I did. "here are things which none but an Eastern—or Onfl who is almost an Eastern, can comprehend." His tone was less churlish than his words, or I Suppose this would have shut me up. He had thrown away the end of his cisrarette, and dreav Gut his oase as he spoke. Lo it was empty. "May I offer you one?" I held out my own Sase. "They are very good. I comprehend a cigarette, if I cannot Arab wit." Again he looked at me, astonished, but less boldly. The thirst for tobacco was strong- stronger even than his desire to repulse an obtrusive stranger. He took the cigarette, and thiinkedme. "Y'>u are not like most of your countrymen," aesaid, with the first gleam of a smile he bad Vouchsafed me." exterior staircase in an angle of the court, and Sigismund drew a key from lib pocket aDd opened it. The room we entered was small, and iu strange confusion. The bed was strewn with papers; MfeS, in every stage of decomposition. The fio jr was covered with them; one of the two tables in the room was thickly piled with tbeio. and with volume. in Persian and Arabic. On tho other tables were pipes, tobacco, a small mirror, some sheets of music, and his toilet arrangements, which were of the simplest de- scription. A bath was in one corner of the room, and some open portmanteaux, into which, as there was no wardrobe, his clothes were pitched. In another corner was some sort of guitar or mandolin. Several pencil sketches of figures were pinned aga,inst the wall; and upon a shelf above the bed was a row of flasks and phials, of every shape and size, all corked, and all labelled. I waa not long left in donbt as to their contents. He filled a pipe and offered it to me. At the same moment, the doorway, through which the moonlight poured, was suddenly darkened by the form of an Arab, in a dark bournous. His gleaming, olive face peered in, with a salutation, and a few rapid words passed between tho two— as it seemed to me, answers on the Arab's part to Ssgismnnd's questions. The Arab indulged freely in pantomime. He raised the paltn of his right hand, cup-like, to receive his cheek, which he inclined into it. Ho imposed the other hand alternately upon his brow, and his stomach anr, Sigisnmnd appeared satisfied. He took down I two phials from the shelf, poured out a measured quantity from each, and handed a glass to the Ulan, who with a profound salaam disappeared. So t hese fellows come to you for medicine, do they ?' I said. "Yn". I am a doctor. At least, I took out my diploma years ago, and used to puta people out of their pain one wry or another, for a guinsa, as easily as tho rest of them." Have you qube given up your profession ?" I only practre on these poor devils. They I have faith in rro and so—they are generally benefited." Then what you said just now was not true?" Very likely. I03,n lie as well as another-to support my views. But what do you mean ?" You do give something to others. You don't live wholly for yourself." 1 ooh This is only selfishness- nothing else. I like doing it. It gives me no trouble, and it amuses me. They tell one another I am a magician, and before I've been in a place a week my door is besieged. But let us drop this. Tell me if this sherb»rt isn't prine-juqt such sniff as inspired Hafiz and Oiner." He filied me a glass, and I rlrank it off. I should have preferred old port or sound claret but for those who like a luscious wine it was, no doubt, excellent. Then I said "Toll me, if you do not mind, what yon are writing—for you evidently are engaged on some big work V' Only my journal—big enough in one sense- my journal all over the world in places where no other European has ever set foot." "That must be mtcrFsiing. And of all the countries you have seen you prefer Egypt V" And Persia, Like Moore's sunflower (not the real one, by the bye), my face is now turned resolutely to the God in the East. I don't trouble the West much." When do you mean to publish your journal ?" Never." Never ? What is the use cf transcribing it, then, as I see ycu are doing)" "If I live to be eighty, imbecile abovo and paralysed below, it may amuse me to live my wanderings ever again. So it must be clearly written out. But why publish ? What good would it do to me ? Fame ?—I despise it. Money? —I have enough. No, I'm too wise to encounter unnecessary worries. I have attained to the Upper Calm of my Persian poets, where the gusts and currents of ambition and vain desire are unknown." Hum Whether your poets, with their eat- and-drink-for-to-morrow you die philosophy, floated superior to these currents, who shall say 1 One thing is clear. They were not so transcen- dent as to refuse to give to the world what they wrote—or you would not be the fooliaher for them, as I think you are." We both daughed. "Perhaps that is what the world would be if I published. The over- stock of foolish books shall not be increased by Hie." We talked on for nearly an hour, and then I left him, for my sumptuous Shepherd's sleek The Aral indnl(/r,3 frselp in Pantomime. J 41 Our countrymen, surely ? You are English I belong to no country." "How is that?" ^1 am more at home on the banks of the ^Tigris than on the Mississippi, or the Thames. I "ate politics, white ties, and smaH talk. I travel VLII the year round, but abjure European cities ftud the haunts of fashionable folk. live Illlnong the people. I am of the people, wherever may be." "Up to a certain point I can understand this," replied. "But do you never feel the want of ^ngenial companionship ?" Never. People bore me—how they bore me '— ^ith their platitudes and their conventionalities. and F.'rdusi are companionship enough ,pr me. I prefer them to Martin JFarquhar Upper." I laughed. "It is easy to see you do not tnove with the age. The reign of platitude is tast-the, reign of paradox, of lawjes ness, has egun. Everything is acceptable new, but the accepted." f "N ew-fangled philosophies have no interest for he replied, carelessly. "Orner Kayam 48 forestalled them all." Por'.onal contact with humanity is better tbl\n constantly poring over the utteiances of e Wisest man that ever lived-even Shak peare, has more fl.sh and blood m him than all yot. old Persians." You are beating'the air, like the preachers," "e returned, with a smile. "I have plenty cf COntact with humanity—only it is-, not of your I don't want to hear, second-hand, what modern peddlars offer for sale as new; still ess do I care to listen to the false enthusiasm?, nd explosive rubbish your travelling spinsters and unspeakable widows pour out to me, when e(('neet at tahlc d'hotes." 11 give you up table d'hotcs. But i- ahi /pieties there are men, aye, and woi en, ioo, •no will give you—"I hesitated. New lamps for old ?" Here he laughed, for "6 first time si see he had conversed. "Well I Prefer the old. Mine, hke Aladdin's, has a Uagical power the new don't possess. All these People, who have so little changed in thousands years—I never tire of studying them. Their .1 Peltry, their written wisdom, interest me as else does." Shall I tell you what I believe to be the secret '.this? You have mastered their tongues, ^"ich comparatively few Europeans know. Ex- cise me, if I say that vanity has something to do it, You feel as if you had a prescriptive ??8bt to their wisdom and poetry, and you exalt '• Value of them as we are apt to do things mehare an exclusive possession." "erhaps a shade of annoyance crossed his face Ut it was gone in a moment, as he said— I care tor no man's opinion; therefore, how can vanity have anything to say to it? I tell I J°U that in America and Europe everything has "^n said that can be said it is all like a sue ed $;»»go, I find more juice and flavour in these ■Easterns than in all the Westerns put together, ^hose fashions of thinking change like their c'othes. Mahommetans are the only true Conser- Natives." Th .y are conservative of prejudice and i apacity," I said, hotly, "but if they were Udowed with every virtue under the sun that ,°uld not affect my argument. You must live, ^ttially alone, among people with whom—say v^at you will—you can have but little in common, 'hat good can you do them, or they you 1 We not put here to live for ourselves alone, or—" <i T I don't subscribe to that." he interrupted. live for myself — a purely selfish life, find it perfectly satisfactory. I want othing from any man neither do I give— the miserable coin I carc nothing about. at which I do care abou-, my society, I am not ^iffalof," *par the story-teller took up his parable again, lny new acquaintance turned towards him, j gave the same amu«ed attention to the narra- ev c he had previously done. When it was finished, 6m there was a general exodus, showing that the tertainment for the evening was over, I said, j stepped into the moonlit street, and I offered Ui another cigarette, Are you staying at Shep- h«rd's Hotel ?" Heaven forbid 11 am at an obscure Arab cara- ^ansaryjn the old quarter of Cairo." Then, sud- j?.n'y» Do you care to come and smoke a narg- 1 e there, before you turn in ?" y.A t £ |ke it he generally mowed down every th'lr0|'ean w't'1 whom he came in contact, and "G was amused, as well as amazed, to find a ry twig among the pliant grass, resisting his ta?r"^U' scVthe. Not otherwise was this invita- i ',0ri explicable. I accepted it cordially, for he terested me; and we walked on, for the best £ ™r,t of a mile, conversing till we reached a low envvay, under which wo jiassed, and I found th in a large square court, surrounded on A sides by a narrow bidcony. Two or three t»!t- w.ore seated on some matting, smoking and Bid f* bright moonlight which fell on the Bv the court where they sat, casting a black at ?w slantwise from the other side. A door "Sell "n there, through which I saw the red- low flare of a lamp^ We mounted the wooden j pastures, where no sick Arabs penetrtted -the dormi tories of the sheep (which he fleeced so closely); those poor "urci'is de Panurge blink- ing at the Pyramids, in flocks, day after day, and lWfbyillg their little chorus of correct approval. What a contrast to this racy anr wron^-headed Sigismund Vie became great friends; in siting d ily during my stay in Cairo. It often struck ne as odd that we should suit each e ther, oar ideas on nearly tll subjects of import eing bametrieally opposed. Perhaps it was on this .-ecuunt that 1111 interested me. Self-proclaimed egoists rarely interest anyone but it required no great dis- cernment to see that his egoism was only a thin crust, which, do what we wo dd to harden it, round him. might easily he p erced through, when occasion demanded. H» o tea made ice angry by his contempt, for accidental civilisation. Alas poor fellow I cannot neip thinking now that had he seen more of it, he might have been saved from c'nn mating a fatal error. I used to .i, ti!,it if the D N,il hiiii.-elf xvitli a fez on his head, :¡ip;i"mund would g-reet him warmly. Me, however, without a fsz, I am happy to remember, he always seemed glad to see. Though we wrangled ovfir the gra it problems of life, there were many things we had in common. In the flower-fields of music and poetry, tho breath of ihe same KWc- t herbs appealed to each, and we knew, in interchanging thoughts, that we felt the beauty of eoiour and form in much the same way. Besides an uuusual capacity with his pencil 1",1" seizing character and delineating action, he sang with great spirit and feelinst snatches of song fiom all lands, which he had picked up, im. pi-ovising an accompaniment on the guitar; and, though untaught, he was never wrong in 1118 harmonies. Like everything he did, his singing was original; not to be confounded with the ordinary baritone warbling of drawing-rooms. You were not bonnd to like aU that wild out- landish music, with its sLmnge intervals and progressions, but certainly you had never heard it before. I found great pleasuro in listening to him, and in listening with him to such music Its the cnf¿-3 and public bands afforded, where his taste and discrimination seemed to me first-rate since it always agreed with mine On one of these occasions—it was my last evening in Cairo for some weeks as I was going up to Wadi-Halfa the next day—we had dined together and had repaired to one of the best music- halls, where a special entertainment was an- nounced. The grea.t attraction to most of the men present was the dancing of a young woman, said to be Circassian, and supposed to be bean-iftil. At least, so the effigies of a female, wherewith the walls had been placarded for some days, were meant to lead you to believe. This houri wal clothed, apparently, III nothing but sequins, and had eyes like spoonsful of black enrrant jelly. She was represented as poised upon her toes, with tambourine in her uplifted arms. Like all the rest of the world, we were curious to see how fat the artist had drawn upon his imagination for this picture. Our little table with coffee was in the front row. A tolerable orchestra, and some rather excru- ciating French singing ocoupied the first part of the evening. Then came the interlude—what was looked to as the gem of the evening, and just before which performance the hall became crowdeds La belle Fatima stepped forward to dance her solo. I was agreeably surprised. Without all the henna, pearl powder, and rouge, the girl would have bean an attractive creature. Slio was splendidly built, and moved well. Her attire, though per- mitting a great deal to be seen through clouds of epangleo gauze, was not as indecent as many present had been led to hope. That the sequins played a prominent part in it, I am not prepared to deny. But, besides the spaugled gauze which descended to her ankles (laden, as her arms were, with glittering bangles), she held a sleezy, gold- woven scarf, which she wound round her body as she danced, then like lightning unwound and enveloped herself from heacl to foot in it. But it was not dancing it was a swift gliding move- ment-a quivering of the whole spangled frame as that of a serpent, with a wonderful interlacing of the arms, and twinkling of the feet, as she struck her tambourine, now and again-volup. tuous, but never indelicate in suggestion with. out the offence, and with infinitely more grace than the contortions of thegnwaze girls I had seen. The manner in which she fluupr her lithe body backwards, inflating the gold threaded scarf, like a nautilus she.l behind her, was memorable, and recalled to me a pose of a. well- known dancer, whom she had certainly never seen. In one of these strange gyrations, which brought her close to the footjight of the raised stage, and consequently almost within an arm's length of us, by some meana or other her glitter- ing gauzes caught fire, and in an instant the girl was enveloped in flame. The whole hall rose with a roar of horror but one man alone acted with prompitude. No one at the side-wings had the courage or the presence of mind to come to the assistance ot the poor terrified creature, who ran shrieking to and fro, literally a piJJar of §$& But Sigismund, with one bound, had cleared the footlights, and flinging his heavy Inverness cape over her, flung her to the ground. The flames weie extinguished; in another minute it would have been too late to save her. He lifted the poor scorched body in his arms, like a child, and carried her off the stage, amid the plaudits of the spectators. I ran round behind, and joined him. He told the manager that he was a surgeon, and would attend to the girl. An old woman, who may have been her mother, for aught I know, and at all events played the part, ran in and out, wring- ing her hands and bellowing, till Sigismund sternly ordered her to hold her peace, cr leave the rocm, I, myself, remained in the adjoining one while the girl was being examined and her wounds tended. She was terribly burnt about the legs aiid body, but her fact. and arms were spared. She was quite tranquil, only half con- scious, I believe, from prostration. When he had administered some stimulant, and wrapped her from head to foot in cotton wool, Sigismund said she might be removed to her own dwelling. I helped him in the transit. Wo carried her in blankets to the squalid room, hard by, which was La Belle Fatima's temporary home, and then, finding I could be ft no further use, and that Sigismund meant to remain with his patient all night, I left him. The next morning I ran in to bid him good-bye. He bad never left the girl's bedside, but locked less anxious than he had done the previous night. 1 don't, fear for her life," ho said. She wor> i die-but I doubt if she will ever be able to dance again. Her legs are so fearfully burnt there will probably be a contraction of seme cf the sinews. A pity—isn't it ?" Poor creature But your own ha.nds are badly burnt, I see." Oh That's nothing. And I don't depend cn my hands, you see—she does, upon her legs." He laughed lightly, as if he cared nothing. I would not take the taste of that characteristic speech out of my mouth. And so, with a hand laid on each of his shoulders, since my hand might not grasp his, We. parted. The pity of it. I have never seen him since. He was often in my thoughts during the two months I was absent from Cairo, and the first thing I did, on mv return, was to go in search of him. My disappointment was great to icarn at caravansary that he had left Cairo; more they could not tell me. I was resolved to discover, ic possible, where he had gone, and why smcs he had given me to understand he would remain here some weeks longer. I bethought me of his patient, the poor burnt ballerina; it was possible she might know what had become of him. But on applying at her room, I fcund that she, also, had departed with her mother; still suffering and lame, they told me, but able to crawl about with a stick. I was giving it up in despair, not un- mixed with resentment at his treatment of me, when, on going to my banker's, a letter was placed in my hands, the superscription on which I at once lecognisexl as being Sigismund's, I forgot money, and everything etae I sat down in the office, and read the following :— Farewell, my friend. Circumstances over which I have no control, as your penny-a-liners say, are driving me forth with my wallet on my back, once more, to the land of the lily and the rose. I would wait to shake your hand—one of the few I ever wish to shake again, but this dancing girl and her mother must be at Teheran j by a certain date and I go with them. The girl can't walk yet, you see, and depends on me. I had a spaniel once, who broke his leg—and it amused me to nurse it. It was only a selfish gratification, devoid of real benevolence, but the dog, not discriminating between motives, became devoted to me. I put on sackcloth when it died. So mav it chance to be with the girl—who knows ? Allah is great May you prosper till we meet again, wheresoever that may be. SIGISMUND." THE END. NEXT WEEK— EREVIO'S STORY. By Mns F. S'f. CLAIR GRIMWOOD, Author of "My Life in Manipur," The Power of an Eye," &c., &c.

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