I presume not. And I am not
with her by necessity either, for I have not suffered any losses.
On the contrary, since I dismissed a certain person--an attendant,
we will call her--from my service, it seems to me that my income is
doubled. The attendant, by the bye, has opened a hotel on the Lake
of Como. Perhaps you, who are so good a man of business, may see
some connexion between these simple facts. I was never good at
managing money, nor at understanding what it meant. It seems that I
have not inherited all the family talents.
"But I return to Egypt, to the Nile, to this dahabiyah, on board of
which it has pleased the fates to dispose my existence for the
present. I am not called a companion, but a lady in waiting, which
would be only another term for the same thing, if I were not really
very much attached to the Princess, old and deaf as she is. And
that is saying a great deal. No one knows what deafness means who
has not read aloud to a deaf person, which is what I do every day.
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