"Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille, and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles——"
"Cordieu, mon ami! we haven't a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she'll appear in Baudeuf's hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!" said Jolicoeur.
These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.
"By Jove, Newton," whispered Studhome, "our fair friends will be conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious lorettes in Paris!"
With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy's contingent with the Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview, as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he produced, and was faithfully believed.
After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan described by Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians."
If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums, and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends, their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.
It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the modern Athens—that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless Solons—was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying, however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that "he possessed a peculiar medium," of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant, seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a visit to one of Her Majesty's ships in the West Indies, where she pryed into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen's berth; and, not content with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter of the masses; but one night the fair medium, "being hot with the Tuscan grape, and high in blood," or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting to play her assumed character.
"Allons, mes camarades!" said Jules, placing his arm through mine and Studhome's; "we shall all face this Cagliostro together—one for all, and all for one, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires.'"
It was impossible not to be pleased with the gaity and winning manner of this young Frenchman. His bearing and uniform, half Parisian and half Oriental, gave him somewhat of the aspect of a dandy brigand; but that bearing is peculiar to all the officers and men of the regiments of Zouaves.