Ferdinand de LESSEPS (1805-1894). L.A.S., Cairo February 15, 1866, to Count Albert de Circourt in Paris; 3 pages in-8, envelope with autogr. countersign. He thanks his dear friend for his "expression of affectionate sympathy in my new sorrow. Your letter has done me good; your noble heart [...] has made mine vibrate. You have guessed that this young woman so rudely struck was the worthy heiress of what has remained for you a type of devotion. Made Delamalle [mother of Agathe, de Lesseps' first wife who died in 1853] in losing her daughter seemed to seek only to console me, Jeanne in the midst of the deepest affliction surrounded me and my son with a tenderness that hovered above all misfortune"... He sent his children on a trip to Upper Egypt on a steamboat, and heard from them every day by telegraph: They arrived in Aswan in good health... His dealings with the Egyptian government and the Porte being almost complete, and "the work in good progress, I shall then make with them the pilgrimage by land from the Isthmus to Jerusalem"...