"What just then was more to my purpose, in Rome I found a great friend. He, Count Albert, was the nephew of the duke my mother had refused to marry. We had been intimate from childhood, but he was five years my senior. I need not say that he was a very different man from his uncle: high-minded, earnest, a cultivated citizen of the world. About to visit Egypt and Palestine, he begged me to join him. His happiness he declared would then be complete.
"Thus chance, or an over-ruling Providence, decided for me. I willingly acquiesced, and the many months we spent together remain as some of the happiest of my life. Though never ceasing to mourn my loss, I quickly threw off depression in the excitement of ever-changing scenes. Only in the still darkness of the night hours would the beloved faces and voices come to me with an ever-recurring sense of loneliness, and, man though I was, my pillow was frequently wet with tears. But our friendship for each other was sincere and has remained so. For the Duke of G.--he has now by the decrees of fate become the head of his family--is still living, though we have seldom met of late years.
"We travelled together, enjoying those sweet pleasures of companionship only given us in youth. With Egypt and Palestine we became intimate and familiar. Cairo delighted us. It was less modern in those days than in these. We were never tired of visiting the mosques with all their sacred and historic charm. We made the acquaintance of the sheikhs, saw them perform impossible magic, heard strange things revealed in a drop of ink. To me these mysteries have remained unsolved to this day. We spent hours and days amongst the tombs of the Caliphs, revelling in their wonderful refinement. We visited all the ancient cities of the Nile: Thebes with its hills and ruins, Memphis with its palm forests and Pyramids--those monuments the most ancient in the world. We contemplated the great Pyramids of Ghizeh by moonlight and felt steeped in mystery. In the same weird light I have stood before the Sphinx and asked the reason and origin of its existence, but only profound silence has answered me. At Dendera, that perfect temple begun by Cleopatra and finished by Tiberius, I gazed upon the features of the famous queen and compared them with those of Hermonthis. I found they resembled each other and confess that I wondered in what consisted the beauty of the woman who changed the fate of the world--but beautiful she must have been. We chartered our dahabeah and travelled up to the Second Cataract. Never shall I forget the soothing repose of those quiet weeks, the delight of our uninterrupted companionship, the books we read together, the daily thoughts we exchanged, the ruined cities we explored. It was an experience that comes only once in a lifetime.