On the contrary, since I dismissed a certain person—an attendant,
we will call her—from my service, it seems to me that my income is
doubled. The attendant, by the bye, has opened a hotel on the Lake
of Como. Perhaps you, who are so good a man of business, may see
some connexion between these simple facts. I was never good at
managing money, nor at understanding what it meant. It seems that I
have not inherited all the family talents.
"But I return to Egypt, to the Nile, to this dahabiyah, on board of
which it has pleased the fates to dispose my existence for the
present. I am not called a companion, but a lady in waiting, which