"Good-day to you, my Hercules," he said. "So you have crushed the dragon?" And he held out his hand.
"Gentlemen," he continued, turning towards his suite, "I shall order a picture to be painted of the taking of the Grand Mosque. Dumas, you have already posed as the principal figure."
The picture was, as a matter of fact, commissioned, but Girodet's principal figure, it will be remembered, was a tall fair hussar, of no name or practically no rank; he it was who took the place of my father, for, eight days after the insurrection of Cairo had been quelled, my father again fell out with Bonaparte, and insisted with renewed vehemence on being allowed to return to France.
He had been for a time distracted from his home-sick despondency by the insurrection at Cairo, but he soon relapsed into it again. A deep disgust with everything, life included, took possession of him, and, in spite of the advice of his friends, he obstinately persisted that Bonaparte should allow him furlough.
Bonaparte made one last attempt during their final interview to endeavour to make him stay, even going so far as to tell him that he meant himself to return to France before long, and promising to take my father back with him. But nothing could allay the desire to go; it had, in fact, become a mania.
Unluckily, Dermoncourt, who was the only man who could influence my father, had returned to his regiment, which was stationed at Belbeys. Directly he heard that the departure was settled, he hurried back to Cairo, and went to my father's house. He found the place dismantled and my father selling the things he did not want to take away.
With the proceeds of this sale my father bought 4000 lbs. of Mocha coffee, eleven Arabian horses (two stallions and nine mares), and chartered a small vessel called la Belle Maltaise.
Want of news—all of which was intercepted by the English cruisers—cut them off completely from all that was passing in Europe, so we will very briefly recount what was happening in Rome and Naples, for the better understanding of what follows.
Ferdinand and Caroline reigned at Naples. Caroline, a second Marie-Antoinette, hated the French for having killed her sister. She was a woman of strong passions in hate and in love, and she indulged in luxuries both of pleasures and of blood.
Ferdinand was a lazzarone; he could scarcely read or write; he knew no other tongue than the Neapolitan dialect. In that patois he composed a slight variation upon the ancient panem et circenses. His version was: "The Neapolitans are ruled by three F's:—Forea—Festa—Farina" (gallows—games—grain).