Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin has gone to Egypt,…

Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin has gone to Egypt, accompanied by twenty of his followers and a number of engineers, with the intent of creating a Suez canal, pursuing "odd symbolic ideas about the project being a marriage between East and West.”

This irritates the Egyptian Viceroy, Muhammad Ali, who wants the Saint-Simonians thrown out, but Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who will ultimately build the canal, is sympathetic and intervenes on their behalf.