A throng of tourists and Arabian rascals was surging about the monuments. A quartet of khaki-clad Britishers kicked their heels on the forehead of the Sphinx, puffing at their pipes as they exchanged the latest garrison jokes. We fought our way through the clinging Arabs, climbed to the summit of the pyramid of Cheops, took in the regulation “sights,” and strolled back to Cairo.
Many a strange bit of human driftwood floated ashore in the Asile Rudolph, but their stories would take too long in the telling. Yet no account of that winter season in Cairo would be complete without mention of “François.” François was, of course, a Frenchman, a Parisian, in fact, and, contrary to the usual rule, it was he, and not a German, who won and still holds the mendicant championship of Egypt. To all who spoke French, he was known as the most loquacious and jolly lodger at the Asile. The Reverend —— had long since turned him away from the door of the rectory; but François would not be driven from his accustomed bed, and paid his two piastres nightly.
As a young man the Frenchman had worked faithfully at his trade; he admitted it with shame. Three years in the army, however, had awakened within him an uncontrollable Wanderlust, and during the twenty-three years since his discharge, he had tramped through every country of Europe. He was a man of meager education and by no means the native ability of Pia and many of the German colony. But long years before his arrival in Egypt, he had evolved “un système” to which his fame as a mendicant was due. The first part of this system concerned his personal appearance. He was pale of complexion, though in reality very robust, and he had trained his shoulders into a droop that suggested the last stages of consumption. His garb, in general, was that of a French workman, but over this he wore a cloak with a long cape that gave him an aspect not unlike a monk, and, combined with his drooping shoulders and sallow, long-drawn face, created a figure so forlorn as to attract attention in any clime. Nothing, François asserted, had contributed so much to his success as this cloak. Rain or shine, from the Highlands of Scotland to the shores of the Black Sea, in the depth of winter or in midsummer, he had clung to this garb for twenty years, replacing in that time a dozen cloaks by others of identical design. Even in Egypt he refused to appear in public without this superfluous outer garment, and, though the African sun had turned the threadbare cape almost as yellow as the desert sands, he was not to be separated from it until he had picked up another in some charitable institution of the city.
The second part of François’s system was extremely simple. The method which Pia so successfully manipulated was too complicated for a man of little schooling; yet François rarely made a verbal appeal for alms. On a score of cards, which he carried ever ready in a pocket of his cloak, was written in as many languages this petition:—
“I am ill and in misery. Please help me.”
The French card was his own production. The others he had collected from time to time as he made friends in the various countries he had visited. For, with all his wanderings, François knew hardly a word of any language but his own.
I set out with the French champion, one Sunday afternoon, to visit the mosque of Sultan Hassan. Not far from the Asile gate, he caught sight of a well-dressed man, whose appearance stamped him as a German. François shuffled his cards with a hasty hand, chose the one in the corner of which was written, in tiny letters, the word “allemand,” and set off at a trot. Arrived within a few paces of his intended victim, he fell into a measured tread, thrust out the card, and waited with sorrowful face and hanging head. The German returned the card with a five-piastre piece.
Cairo is nothing if not cosmopolitan, and it is doubtful if every one of the cards did not make its appearance at least once during the afternoon. American tourists, English officers, French entrepreneurs, Greek priests, Italian merchants, Turkish clerks, Indian travelers, even the Arab scribes sitting imperturbable beside their umbrella-shaded stands,—all had the misery of François called to their attention. Whether it was out of gratitude for a sight of the familiar words of his native tongue, or out of pity for the abject creature who coughed so distressingly and pointed to his ears like a deaf mute whenever a question was put to him, rare was the man who did not give something. François collected more than a hundred piastres during that single promenade. Yet before we set out he had called me aside and drawn from an inner pocket a purse that contained twenty-six English sovereigns in gold!
But it was his method of dispensing his income that made the Frenchman an enigma to his confidants. François neither drank nor smoked; he rarely, if ever, indulged even in the mildest dissipation. Not far from the Asile, he stopped at a café for his petit déjeuner of chocolate and rolls and his morning paper; and, had he met the Khedive himself out for a stroll, François would not have appealed to him before that breakfast was over. He was strictly a union man, was François, in his hours of labor.
But his daily expenditures were for bed and breakfast only. There were scores of French chefs in Cairo, ever ready to welcome whomever knew the kitchen door and the language of the cuisine. If his shoes wore out, there were several French shops in the vicinity of the Esbekieh Gardens. If he were in need of nothing more costly than a bar of soap, François begged one of the first druggist he came upon. The sovereigns which cosmopolitan Cairo thrust upon him were spent almost entirely for souvenirs for his relatives in Paris. The most costly albums of Cairene views, fine brass ware, dainty ornaments of native manufacturer were packed in the bazaars and shipped away to those fortunate brothers, sisters, and cousins of François in the French capital. Only once in twenty-three years had he visited them, but few were the towns and cities of all Europe the arts and manufactures of which were not represented in that Parisian household. As a supplement to his gifts, there came semi-annually a letter from François, announcing some new success in his career as a traveling salesman.