A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

202 NIGHT SCENE.
part of the deck reading the Arabian Nights
Entertainments in Arabic to the cook, the Re is,
and his son Salem ; and their attitudes of atten-
tion, their dark eager faces grouped together, and
partially lighted by a lantern suspended from
above, would form an admirable subject for an
Eastern sketch. Our French servants are slum-
bering away on the cushions of the tent the
ennuis of a jour de fete which has offered them
neither cafes, nor restaurants, nor billets de spec-
tacle, nor the opportunity of making an extra
toilette. They cannot comprehend the gratifica-
tion of visiting a country where none of those
Parisian adjuncts to pleasure (as understood by
them) exist ; and like all of their country people of
that class, they have an unaccommodating and tur-
bulent spirit which manifests itself under trifling
contrarieties, in noisy outbreaks of temper, which
render them intolerable nuisances when they are
brought into such close collision with one, as
must inevitably be the case in a Nile boat. I do
not pretend to say that English servants are less
difficult to be pleased ; but they have a sentiment
of respect for their superiors, and a propriety of
feeling which leads them to be silent at least,
even where they cannot be satisfied.
The moon just risen in hei" full splendour from