The life of the French poet, Gerard de Nerval, founder
of the Symbolist Movement, was part dream, part tragedy. In his Voyages en Orient he showed himself capable of observa- tion • and from this point of view his book is a valuable record of an earlier Near East. When Nerval arrived there, Egypt was still mainly. under French influence ; and he had a most patriotic dislike for the Englishmen whom he met. It was in his character to find his happiest associations among the
natives, and this fact gave him a more than usually intimate
knowledge of their ways of life and of thought. Possibly some of his dream-life found its way into the book ; for there is plenty of romance here, and the title it bears in the newly- published English version, The Women of Cairo (Rotrtledge : two vols., 25s.), is not wholly inappropriate.
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