One might have thought that this people, who had so strenuously resisted the making of peace, who had turned against the most trusted of their own leaders for accepting terms, who, in the hope of rendering peace impossible, had frantically attempted to attack the hostages—one might have thought that this people would have repudiated the terms, and have sought every opportunity to injure and annoy the French. Nor could they with any reason have been held altogether blamable in refusing to abide by terms made in direct opposition to their wishes. Yet this is, as I have said, just what they did not do, and peace once established, the French went about among them as safe and as free from molestation as though the people had no grievance against them.
Let us turn now and see how the French interpreted the amnesty they had accorded the people.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PRICE OF PEACE
"They have nothing to fear; are they not our people?"
Was it possible for the people of Cairo to have any better assurance than these words of General Kleber, that the "Aman," or amnesty, that was so loudly proclaimed and, by the French, so enthusiastically celebrated, was to be the full and free "Aman" which alone is understood by Oriental peoples? One would have thought not, but the Cairenes were to learn differently. They were to be taught that "amnesty" is a word which, like so many others, may be interpreted in varying senses, and that it has no other meaning than that which the user chooses to accord to it.
Among the rejoicings for the great victory of a strong, well-supplied, and well-nourished army of well-trained and disciplined veterans over a famished, half-naked, wholly undisciplined, and almost wholly exhausted mob of civilians, there had been, among other things, a great banquet, to which all the notables of the town were invited, and at which they were received by Kleber in a gracious manner—so gracious, indeed, that they went away full of pleasant dreams for the future. General Kleber had taken the opportunity to invite a number of the Ulema to meet him on the following Friday morning, and believing that it was his intention, as indeed he had declared it to be, to discuss with them the revival of the Dewan and other matters, they did not fail to appear punctually at the appointed time, some of them looking forward to receiving some recognition of their services in the promotion of peace. Arrived at the General's, they were not long in learning that the gala costume with which they had honoured the occasion was most unhappily inappropriate.
As a first intimation of the vanity of their hopes they were kept waiting in an ante-chamber until their patience was almost exhausted. At length Kleber entered, and without any words of welcome or apology straightway proceeded once more to censure them for having allied themselves with the Turks. When the Sheikhs once more protested that they had done so under his own instructions, given at the time that he had announced the approaching departure of the French, he blamed them for not having suppressed the "insurrection." They replied that this was wholly out of their power, and that those who, as he was aware, had made an effort to stop the fighting had been rudely treated, and even roughly handled, by the people. But it was the old story of the wolf and the lamb. Kleber was determined to bring the Sheikhs in guilty in any case, and upbraided them with being double-faced. This was not what the poor Sheikhs, who had honestly done their best in the cause of peace, had expected as the reward of their efforts, or as the natural sequence of the courtesies extended to them at the banquet. All this, however, was but the preface to the announcement of what was, in fact, the real object of their being summoned to meet the General. This was nothing less than the seizing the Sheikhs as hostages for the payment by the city of an enormous indemnity and the infliction of exorbitant fines upon each of five of the leading Sheikhs. While yet the Sheikhs, dumbfoundered by this novel interpretation of the word "amnesty," were trying to assure themselves that they were not the victims of an ill-timed jest, the General left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and the Sheikhs found that they were prisoners.