File:The rulers of the Mediterranean (1894) (14784967895).jpg

Identifier: rulersofmediterr00rich (find matches)
Title: The rulers of the Mediterranean
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Richard Harding Davis
Subjects:
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Gumberg Library, Duquesne University
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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N IN EGYPT 145 in Egypt, knew that the repudiation of debts,while possible in a powerful or free government,was not to be feared from that country. So therebegan a reign of extravagance for which historyhas no parallel. If money breeds mon-ey, it is also truethat those who spendmoney freely are giv-en more chances todo so than any oneelse. Adventurers,charlatans, rascals ofevery climate andevery nationality,swarmed down uponCairo, and foughtwith one anotherfor a chance to glutthemselves at the re-past which this reck-less profligate spread for all comers. No man probably was ever sobasely cheated as was Ismail, or on so magnifi-cent a scale. And nothing remains but ruins toshow where the money spent on his own per-sonal pleasure was bestowed. That other mag-nificent reprobate, William M. Tweed, left mon-uments like the Court House to commemoratehis thefts of public money; but Ismails pal-aces are falling in pieces, the rain has washedthe paint off the boards, the tips of the crescents
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RIAZ PASHA, ime-minister of Egypt 146 THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN are broken, and great gardens filled with foun-tains and mosaic paths are choked with weeds andcovered with fallen leaves and the dirt and dustof neglect and decay. You can walk over longmarble floors which have sunk by their ownweight through the rotten foundations, and seeyourself at full length in bleared mirrors sur-rounded by the gilt borders and blue silken cur-tains of the Second Empire. Ismail orderedthese palaces as men order hats, and threw themaway as you toss an empty cartridge from a gun-barrel. And that was all the most of them everwere, empty cartridges, mere shells of wood paint-ed to look like marble, and gilding and mirrors,as tasteless as the buildings at the CentennialExposition, and lasting as long. And yet they pleased him, and he orderedmore and more, so that wherever his eye mightrest it would fall upon a palace which wouldserve as a fitting covering for his royal person,and as a testimony to

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