Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/227

 the hospitality of one of them, Louis de Maubant, whose house was close to the Esbekieh. Here, nursed by her faithful attendant, Rose, living on nothing but asses' milk, of which she took seven or eight glasses a day, Rachel picked up wonderfully. She received a great many visitors every evening, lying on a sofa or reclining in an American rocking-chair. Reading or being read to was her favourite pastime. Michel Lévy, the publisher, had sent her a large parcel of new books from Paris for her amusement; but she preferred her Corneille, of which she had brought an old volume with her, bound in green morocco. That, the Bible, Bossuet, and FenelonFénelon [sic], formed the staple of her literature. Although not a believer in the doctrines of Christianity, her innate appreciation of the great and pure in art led her infallibly towards the grand poems of her nation, and those trumpet-blasts of eloquence and religious fervour which distinguished the productions of the preachers of the grand siècle. The poor passionate, storm-beaten heart seemed to rise, in the enforced calm and retirement of her present life, borne on the wings of these mighty souls, to greater heights than it had ever reached before; and her letters from the Nile, dried, as she says, with the sand of the desert and the dust of departed kings and queens, are tinged with the solemnity and dignity of death.

Soon she found the noise of the town too much for her, and accepted Soleiman Pasha's invitation to go and stop with him in his house in the old town of Cairo. Tiring shortly of the splendour and luxury surrounding her there, she hired an old Arab house close to the banks of the Nile, and set up house on her own account. One of her French friends at Cairo