All the town was awaiting the return of the deputation with an eagerness and suppressed excitement that made their short absence seem an age, and great was the relief when they were seen once more approaching the landing, and great the joy with which the news they bore was received throughout the town. No time was lost in responding to Bonaparte's invitation, and, taking with them the keys of the city, all the chief men set out for Guizeh, anxious at once to gain renewed assurance of the fair hopes awakened by the report of the deputation, and at the same time give the French General a proof of their readiness to comply with his desires.
Bonaparte was, if possible, more gracious than before, and again dilated upon the purely friendly and beneficent intentions of the invasion, of his sympathy for Islam, and his desire to make his coming the opening of a new era in the history of the people, who were thenceforth to enjoy all the blessings that the establishment of the Republic had already conferred upon the French themselves. He was listened to with the emotionless stolidity of the Oriental, but not without occasional exclamations of approval, yet as he went on his hearers were moved by steadily growing wonder at and distrust of a speech so utterly unlike anything they had ever heard of, or conceived as possible, from the lips of a conqueror. They had, indeed, read the proclamation, copies of which had been sent to Cairo, but it had failed with them, as with the people of Alexandria, to convey any intelligible conception of the ideas it was intended to impart, and the "Little Corporal's" discourse reaching them through the mouth of an interpreter helped them nothing at all to grasp the real aims and object of the French. All that they could comprehend was that they were expected to accept the French as their rulers; that their lives, property, and religion would be respected; and that the French were as eager to reward their friends as to annihilate their enemies. But loyalty to the French and loyalty to the Sultan were so mixed up in the proclamation and in Bonaparte's speech, and were in themselves, in the eyes of the Egyptians, two such absolutely irreconcilable things, that the Sheikhs were completely bewildered by the attempt to solve the enigma thus presented to them. So they were content for the moment to accept the French assurance that they were to be treated as friends, and for the rest God was great, and they put their trust in Him.