Page:The Egyptian Difficulty and the First Step out of it.djvu/13

Rh as those very events which had called forth British action, afforded a very strong presumption that he was not.

However, the British having spent their blood and their money on putting Tewfik back in the place he had been too weak to hold, there Tewfik was to remain; and notwithstanding his proved weakness, and the contempt and aversion of the Egyptians, Tewfik was to be imposed upon Egypt as its future ruler at all hazards.

That this was the precise formula in which the British decision was shaped, we do not pretend to say. All novel-readers know that when the hero of the tale plunges into the stream, and rescues the drowning maiden from the torrent, he straightway falls in love with her and marries her. If she happens to be blind, or half-witted, or hump-backed, it only adds to the charm of the romance.

The British are the most chivalrous and, consequently, the most gentle-hearted people in the world, and they were precisely in the position of the hero of the tale. In the process of delivering Tewfik from his peril, there sprang up in the natural generosity of the British mind a feeling of personal interest in the creature they had saved. The deliverers began to find their hearts warming with tenderness towards the man they had rescued; they came to regard his defects with compassionate indulgence, to look upon him as "their man," and then, more Britannico, to stand up for him. Ultimately, even, they were almost ready to persuade