Far from being elated at having at last discovered where Zanthe now lived, Roger was cast into further depths of misery. Violent jealousy was now added to the torment of his loss, for it seemed obvious that Zanthe, having lost her husband, had been taken as a concubine by the powerful Pasha. The thought of her in the arms of that grossly fat, cunning Oriental, whom he had seen on several occasions, nearly drove Roger into a frenzy. Blinded by rage he stalked the streets, heedless of where he was going, and it was over an hour before he had cooled down sufficiently to think clearly.
Returning to the palace, he made a careful reconnaissance. In his fervid imagination he was now visualizing himself breaking in and rescuing Zanthe from the horrible fate that he felt certain must have been forced upon her by her family. The entrance to the courtyard was guarded by Janissaries and on either side it was flanked by other palaces; so he walked through several narrow, zigzagging alleys until he judged that he had got behind it. Some minutes elapsed before he was able to make quite certain of his bearings; but at length he satisfied himself that a long, eighteen-foot-high wall, with iron spikes on top and the fronds of palm trees showing above them, must screen from sight the bottom of the spacious garden of the palace.
In the wall there was a single, low doorway of stout wood bound with iron. It was barred on the inside, and one glance at it was sufficient to tell him that it would be difficult to force short of blowing it open with gunpowder. It reminded him of a similar door that he had blown open in India, also with the intention of rescuing a lovely lady from a harem.
But the circumstances had then been very different. He had had British troops to aid him, the girl inside had been English and, in all but name, his wife; for they had planned to marry as soon as they could get home. Now, even if he procured a bag of gunpowder and blew in the door, how could he hope to overcome single-handed the score or more of Janissaries that the Pasha retained as a bodyguard?
A further thought then cooled his ardour. Could he even count on Zanthe being willing to let him carry her off? It was possible that, as an Eastern woman, brought up in the Mohammedan traditions, she had never expected to have a young and handsome husband. As the daughter of an Arab merchant she might even count herself lucky to have become—as her beauty would ensure —the pampered favourite in a wealthy nobleman's seraglio.
Loath to give up his wild idea of regaining possession of Zanthe by force, he spoke to a man who was sitting in a doorway of one of the houses facing the wall. On the flimsy excuse that he was feeling faint from lack of air, he offered the man a piece of money to be allowed to go up and sit for a while on the roof of his house. The man, who was a leather merchant, readily agreed and led him through his shop, up two flights of rickety stairs on to the roof. Like nearly all the roofs in Cairo it was flat and, the house being a two-storey one, only a few feet above the level of the wall opposite.
From there Roger could see, two hundred yards away, the upper storeys of the back of the palace and the domes of its roof, but his hopes of seing into the garden were disappointed. Immediately inside the wall a double row of palm trees had been planted, so that their interlaced fronds rose for another dozen feet above the wall, thus securing the privacy of the garden from the gaze of the occupants of the dwellings outside it. If he came and sat there for hours every day, there still would be no chance of even catching a glimpse of his divinity.
Returning to his house he refused the meal that had been prepared for him and spent a miserable evening thinking of plans to get speech with Zanthe, only to reject them. Had she been living in the house of her former husband, he might have got into it by disguising himself as an Arab pedlar of silks, fans or perfumes, or he could have kept observation on it until, as sooner or later must prove the case, she would be carried from it in a litter to visit friends or go shopping in the bazaar. But, even if he could get into the palace, he knew that he would never be allowed into the seraglio, and any attempt to waylay her when she left would be equally hopeless, as it was certain that she would be accompanied by a guard of Janissaries.
Next day, almost ill with longing for her, he resumed his duties. But he was not the only one mooching round headquarters in a state of sullen depression, although the others had different reasons. The situation of the Army was going from bad to worse. Many of the men had become victims of venereal disease, contracted from the coloured street-women, and several hundred were suffering from acute ophthalmia, caught while bathing in the polluted waters of the Nile. Food was becoming scarcer than ever and from Alexandria and Rosetta Kleber and Menou both reported actual famine; because Nelson, realizing how short the French were of supplies, had deliberately put ashore the three thousand sailors he had captured at Aboukir, to deplete further their scant reserves.
In spite, too, of all Bonaparte's blandishments, the half-million population of Cairo were becoming increasingly restless. They were finding, as had other people whose countries he had occupied, that' liberation ' by the French had to be paid for in no uncertain manner. Not only were taxes exacted as heavy as they had had to pay under the brutal oppression of the Mamelukes, but the French, having lost their own treasure in L'Orient, were now seizing hoards of gold wherever they could find them, in order to pay their troops. The number of French soldiers murdered increased weekly, and even the Turkish officials would no longer co-operate with their ' allies' except when practically forced to do so.
Bonaparte continued to work like a demon and showed no lack of confidence in the future. But at about this time he received a terrible personal blow, about which Roger heard from Bourrienne.
The letters that now got through from France were very few, but one had reached Junot. Among other news, it stated that Josephine was being unfaithful to her husband and that her infidelities were so flagrant that they were the talk of Paris. Junot, who regarded Bonaparte as a god, could not endure the thought that his wife should betray him. He became so enraged that he committed the shocking indiscretion of showing the letter to his beloved master.
Bonaparte had good cause to suspect that Josephine had already been unfaithful to him within a few weeks of their marriage. He had had to leave her in Paris after a single night's honeymoon to set off on his Italian campaign and, despite his passionate appeals by letter to her, many months had elapsed before he could persuade her to join him in Italy. Now that he was convinced of her infidelity his rage and despair knew no bounds.
Some days later, in the hope of getting Josephine out of his mind, he ordered Duroc to arrange an entertainment for himself and his Staff at which he could inspect a number of Eastern beauties. Duroc, being puritanical by nature, was not the man to have been charged with this commission, and he bungled matters badly, probably by simply ordering an Arab slave-dealer to select the beauties for him. In any case, those produced at the Haman where the party was held were to the Arab and not the European taste. They were quite young, but had been specially fattened by a regime of idleness and gorging great quantities of sweetmeats. Their breasts were huge and their bottoms enormous. In vain they sang a monotonous chant in shrill voices, twanged their lyres and wagged their naked stomachs in a Nautch dance. Bonaparte looked on sourly for a while, then stood up and stalked out in disgust.
Yet, a few days later, his interest was really caught, and by a Frenchwoman he chanced to see in the Tivoli Garden. Roger, who happened to be with him, was promptly charged to find out who she was. As Roger had once before played ponce, in the service of his country, to Bonaparte, he had no objection to doing so again in the hope of cheering up the unhappy little Corsican and rendering the atmosphere at headquarters slightly less sultry.