that men are not to go beyond certain limits, unless at least
four are together, and that they are not, under any pretext whatever, to
enter a native house.

"Besides those known to have been killed, there are twenty-three
missing, and there is no doubt they too have been murdered, and their
bodies buried. The Egyptian head of the police has warned us that there
are gatherings in the lower quarters, and that he believes that some of
Mourad's emissaries are stirring the people up to revolt. A good many
parties of Arabs are reported as having been seen near the city.
Altogether I fear that we are going to have serious trouble; not that
there is any fear of revolt, we can put that down without difficulty,
but this system of assassination is alarming, and if it goes on, the men
will never be safe outside their barracks, except in the main
thoroughfares. One does not see how to put it down. An open enemy one
can fight, but there is no discovering who these fellows are in a large
population like this, and it would be of no use inflicting a fine on the
city for every French soldier killed; that would affect only the richer
class and the traders. There is no doubt, too, that the news that our
fleet has been completely destroyed has dispirited the soldiers, who
feel that for the present, an any rate, they are completely cut off from
France."

"That is certainly serious, general," one of the officers said, "and
there seems only the project of the invasion of India or a march to
Constantinople. After our march here, though it was but little over a
hundred miles, and the greater portion of the way along the bank of the
river, with our flotilla with stores abreast of us, neither of these
alternatives look as easy as they seemed to us before we set foot in
this country."

"No, indeed, colonel; our campaign at home gave us no idea of what the
march of our army would be across these deserts, and it certainly seems
to me that the idea of twenty thousand men marching from here to India
is altogether out of the question. If our fleet had beaten the English,
gone back and brought us twenty thousand more men, and had then sailed
round the Cape, and come up to Suez to fetch us and land us in India,
the thing would have been feasible enough, and in alliance with the
Sultan of Mysore we might have cleared the English out altogether, but
the land march seems to be impossible; a small body of men could never
fight their way there, a large bod