LADY HESTER, whose health was detestable, hoped that a new sky and a new climate would bring her that cure which always persisted in fleeing before her. On May 10, 1813, she left the enchantress Hama without regrets. The sun was scorching and the marching hours very trying, but Lady Hester, who never permitted herself to be inconvenienced, slept late and preferred to allow the porters to sweat blood and water at high noon. The caravan went back towards the north, so far as Latakia, where the traveller calculated to embark for Russia and perhaps for the Indies. Meantime, she maintained an active correspondence with Ebir Sihoud, the King of the Wahabis, her credulous imagination being stimulated by the Bedouin stories about this prince, who had presented himself with 800 wives. The doctor did not succeed in ascertaining what were her intentions, until she was about to depart. "It is to be hoped that she has no idea of making an excursion to Derazeh," said he in alarm; "she would be capable of taking me!"
The route, meadows spotted with mauve flowers in which the horses sank, followed the Orontes, dominated by the Ansaries mountains, a rugged chain still covered by a coating of snow.
Only, there arrived a thing which was not expected; the plague made its appearance and reigned as a harsh mistress over the Syrian coast. European vessels fled from the contaminated ports. Lady Hester accordingly hired a house and waited, without impatience, for the country was beautiful. All the summer she hunted the hares, the partridges, the francolins and the gazelles which abounded in the woods of olive and sycamore-trees on the bank of the Nahr-el-Kebir. Mr. Barker, the consul at Aleppo, had brought his little family.
On October 7, Bruce, recalled suddenly to England, set out for Aleppo with Beaudin. He was leaving his friend for a long time. What happened at this departure, which was to be without return? And, first, what was he in regard to Lady Hester. Simple travelling companion or lover? The doctor observes on this subject a discretion wholly professional. He remarks that Bruce, during the three years in which he travelled over the East with her, derived much from the fruit of her experience of the world and her conversation. We know nothing in reality. But who knows if Bruce did not think of Lady Hester what Heinrich Heine was to say later of Marie Kalergis: "She is not a woman; she is a monument; she is the cathedral of the god Love." And men do not much care about falling at the feet of cathedrals; they fear the gossip of the idlers, and they have too much difficulty in getting up again afterwards.
The plague was causing great havoc, redoubling its efforts, and established itself in the centre of the town. The Arabs, besides, referred the matter to Mohammed, and took no further precautions or remedies. Barker lost his two little girls. And, on the eve of starting for Sidon, Lady Hester, who had definitely renounced the idea of returning to Europe, was brought down; she also, by the disease. In the evening, the doctor was attacked by fever. Although hardly able to stand, he remained, none the less, at the pillow of the sick woman, for whom he disputed three weeks with death. The servants were struck down, and Latakia was shaken by a violent storm. The water entered in streams through the cracked roof, and they were obliged to move Lady Hester's bed incessantly to prevent it from being flooded. On December 15, she had a relapse; finally, on January 6, 1814, they succeeded in hoisting her into the boat which was to take her to Sidon.
In the environs of that town, the Greek patriarch Athanasius had let to her, for a mere nothing, the Monastery of Mar-Elias. This monastery, built on a bare spur of the Lebanon, commanded a view of the Syrian Sea. Small and dilapidated, it had the privilege of preserving in its walls the body of the last patriarch seated in his chair. Unpleasant detail: he had been badly embalmed and recalled himself to the sense of smell of his faithful friends in an ill-timed manner.
It is at this moment that Lady Hester changed in character. Her convalescence being prolonged, she became simple in her habits up to cynicism. She displayed in her conversation a bitter and singularly acute spirit, judging men as though she were reading from an open book in their hearts. She found some consolations in a Sphynx-like attitude, and being well acquainted with the undercurrents and the mechanism of European politics, she was able to afford herself the luxury of predictions realisable and rather often realised.
The plague, which the winter had for some months benumbed, resumed with the spring its victorious march. It broke out everywhere with a new violence, at Damascus, at Sidon, at Bairout, at Homs. The doctor hoped that the scourge would spare the little hamlet of Abra, some metres from the monastery where he had his quarters. But the late passion for cleanliness of a peasant named Constantine, who, at the age of sixty years, never having taken warm baths, went to obtain them at Sidon, was the cause of all the evil. He brought back the plague. Then terror seized upon the village. The peasants fled into the mountain with their cattle and their silk-worms; and there was no one to remove the dead bodies, which decomposed where they lay and increased the infection. The doctor, having no longer permission to cross the threshold of the monastery, communicated with Lady Hester through the window, and his servant Giovanni having fallen ill, he was also regarded as suspect and remained abandoned, with the agreeable prospect of doing his own cooking and washing his own dishes.
The month of May was by misfortune particularly hot. There were scenes which nothing will ever surpass in horror. A peasant of the name of Shahud lost his only son, whom he adored. He carried him himself to the common grave; but having loosened the stone and perceived the body of that accursed Constantine, he was seized with madness. He threw himself on the corpse to give it as food to the jackals. But death had done its work better; the limb by which he had intended to seize him remained in his hand. What a spectacle! Before the half-open charnel-house, this peasant, with distracted air, brandishing a piece of a corpse, curses and insults it while almost choking! And all around the beautiful and fresh country under the blue sky....
Then life resumes all its rights. The village forgot the death-rattle of the dying and resounded soon with songs and careless laughter. Constantine's eldest son, who had been about to be married, being dead, he was replaced immediately by his young brother. The bridegroom was only thirteen, and cast envious glances in the direction of the companions of his own age, who were dancing merrily, without looking at his wife, who was three years older than himself, it is true.
To recover from all these emotions, Lady Hester resolved to visit Baalbeck. She set out on October 18, and, from fear of the plague, she carried away provisions for the entire journey. She will not become an accomplished fatalist until many years afterwards.... She conceived even meat-puddings, which were theoretically to keep for several months and which set the teeth of the escort on edge, so invincible were their hardness and dryness! A thing decided upon being for her a thing done, the doctor was obliged to put up with the puddings, not without sadness. She had also the idea of travelling on donkeys, she and all her people. She had time to spare, and she was incensed at the complete oblivion in which her relatives and friends in England had left her. She thought in this way to attract the attention of the consuls and the merchants, and to make the disgrace of this equipage fall upon all those who ought to have watched over her welfare. A Pitt travelling on a donkey! What a bomb in Downing Street! Yes, but the absent go quickly.
The plain of the Bekaa brought them comfortably to Baalbeck. The camp was pitched beyond the town, at the springs of the Litani. From Ras-el-Aia the travellers contemplated one of the most beautiful districts of Asia, and every evening they found a new charm. In the distance, the great white sheik, the solemn Hermon, the slopes of the Lebanon, the deep and quiet valley showing the harmony of its verdure, wearied and fatigued by the summer, around the Temple of Baal, the six columns light, exquisite, fragile and, nevertheless, living symbol of strength and eternity. And to give to this country of light a more human beauty, tents scattered at the foot of a mosque and long flocks of reddish and grey sheep coming to drink.
What were Lady Hester's feelings? What reflections assailed her when she walked in the Acropolis, traversing the courts surrounded by exedras, encountering the capitals in rose-coloured granite of Hassouan, the lustral basins with sculptures so delicate that the tritons and the chariots appeared cameos, passing under the compartment-ceilings of the Temple of Bacchus, halting, in astonishment, before the principal arch of the door, of which the audacious jet cleaves the sky, before the walls where, amongst the stone lacework, are found everywhere the egg and the arrow, emblem of life and of death?
The doctor is a confidant too discreet. His personal taste leads him to deplore the gigantic stones which form the sub-basement of the temple. He does not like the Trilithon! He finds that the colossal dimensions of the three monoliths are not in harmony with the rest of the edifice and destroy all symmetry! But it is an opinion in which he stands quite alone.
He was not able to resist the pleasure of writing on the walls of the temple some verses in honour of Lady Hester:
The intention was amiable, if the result were mediocre. But Lady Hester caused them to be effaced promptly.
"I have made it a rule," said she to him more frankly than courteously, "since I entered Society, never to allow people to write verses about me. If I had been willing, I should have had thousands of poets to celebrate me in every way, but I consider there is nothing so ridiculous. Look at the Duchess of Devonshire, who receives every morning a sonnet on her drive, an impromptu on her headache, and a crowd of other absurdities. I abominate that sort of thing."
The doctor took it for granted.
The weather suddenly changed, and on November 7 the caravan started for the Neck of Cedars, which the snows were threatening to obstruct. The travellers were swept by one of those frightful storms of which the countries of the East possess the secret; tents torn down, lanterns and fires extinguished, the mountain shaken and trembling, howling of the wind. The muleteers prudently vanished, fearing a night service. They crossed the neck at last, leaving on their right the cedars to which the doctor compares those of Warwick, scarcely less beautiful, and descended on the villages of Becherre and Ehden, by a straight passage which would have frightened many expert horsemen. Some miles from Ehden, there was, in the middle of the mountain, clinging to the rock, suspended above the abyss in which the Nadicha rumbles, a famous monastery, the Monastery of St. Anthony. Miracles were there more specially reserved for epileptics and the mentally afflicted; but St. Anthony was far more indebted for his celebrity to the violent and implacable hostility which he showed towards all representatives of the weak sex without exception. The Moslems ought to venerate a saint so judicious. Not only had no woman ever passed the threshold of the convent, but female animals themselves were rigorously shut up, from fear of their mingling with the privileged males in the forbidden precincts. It was this reason which decided Lady Hester to make a détour in order to go to brave a saint so little gallant. She invited the superior in her own convent, associating with him, for form's sake, some sheiks of the village, and making a courteous allusion to the firman of the Sultan which gave her the right to enter every place. She went to the monastery mounted on a she-ass—double sacrilege! When she entered the court, all the onlookers, monks and servants, expected the earth to open under the feet of the impudent women to swallow her up. But all passed off excellently, and she visited the monastery from top to bottom. At every door there was a violent altercation which threatened to turn to fisticuffs between the feminist and anti-feminist clans of the monks. The meal was long and plentiful. St. Anthony lost his prestige; that of Lady Hester increased in proportion.
Tripoli, where Lady Hester occupied, for several months, an uninhabited convent of the Capuchins, had as military governor Mustafa Aga Barbar. Of very low origin, the son of a muleteer, he had, at the head of a band of resolute fellows, captured the fortress of the town by surprise. The people, who detested the janissaries, had risen in revolt with him, and a firman of the Porte confirmed him in the post which he had usurped, for in the East the strongest reason is always the best. He received Lady Hester with a homely simplicity which contrasted with the stiff politeness of the Turks. She made on him a lasting impression.
In January 1815, Lady Hester returned to Mar-Elias. Scarcely had she alighted from her donkey than she received horrible news, brought back from Bairout by Beaudin: a Capugi Bachi had arrived, demanding her with hue and cry! Everyone knows that a Capugi Bachi does not come into a province except to give orders for strangulation, hanging, imprisonment and the bastinado, never for an agreeable object. Lady Hester smiled slyly and sent a pressing message to the Capugi Bachi, who arrived at the end of dinner. Beaudin and Meryon, who had decorated their girdles with pistols, regarded with a hostile eye this little man who came to disturb their digestion. They were far from expecting the reality.
An attack of plague would have sufficed as occupation to the average woman; nevertheless, it was during her illness that Lady Hester drew up a plan of campaign around an old manuscript which had fallen by chance into her hands, and which indicated the site where fabulous riches had been concealed in the ruins of Sidon and Ascalon. Treasures? Nothing was impossible. In the East the inhabitants possess no certainty of preserving their property. Deprived of banks, deprived of paper-money easy to handle, subject to the arbitrary will of avaricious governors, living in the midst of perpetual wars and troubles—in twenty years Tripoli had been besieged five times and five times sacked—they have only one resource: a good and mysterious hiding-place, unknown to all and particularly to their women.
Moreover, the people divided European travellers into three categories: exiles, spies and treasure-seekers. Lady Hester strongly suspected the Porte of laying a trap for her, but it was too dangerous to place herself in the first categories of foreigners, and she played the part of one who believed in the manuscript. A little time afterwards, she was to believe in it in reality and blindly.
To finish gaining the Turkish Government, she begged Sir Robert Liston, British Ambassador, to present the project to the Reis Effendi, insisting on the fact that all the money would belong to the Sultan; she reserved only for herself the glory of the discoveries. As for the expenses, nothing was more simple; England would pay the bill. "If the Government refuses," said she, "I shall send it to the newspapers. It is a right and certainly not a favour. Sir Edward Paget, when Ambassador at Vienna, made Mr. Pitt pay him £70,000 for the liveries of his servants during four years. I do not see why I should not do the same thing."
The Turkish Government, delighted at an affair in which there would be everything to gain and nothing to lose, immediately despatched Darwish Mustapha Aga Capugi Bachi, who was to place himself under Lady Hester's orders and to invest her with an authority which no European ambassador or non-official Christian had ever had, and still less a woman. He was the bearer of firmans for the Pacha of Acre, for the Pacha of Damascus and for all the governors of Syria.
Scarcely disembarked from Baalbeck, Lady Hester launched into a formidable and arduous undertaking. But she adored action. And then what excitement to command! What joy to reign without control over these Orientals created and placed in the world to obey! General-in-chief on the eve of delivering battle, she despatched messengers. Quick! a line to Malim Musa, of Hama, who will be her good counsellor and will watch the Capugi Bachi: "You know that I do not travel by roundabout ways; an urgent affair calls for your presence at Acre." Quick! a letter to Soliman Pacha to explain the matter to him and to demand his help.
Mar-Elias, transformed into headquarters, resounded with the galloping of horses which were departing or arriving, resounded with a thousand orders which intersected one another from morning till evening. The excitement increased. The grooms kept their animals in readiness for departure. Giorgio and the Capugi Bachi went to Acre to reconnoitre. Beaudin recruited mules. The doctor gained Damascus with all speed to procure what was wanting for the expedition, and found time to see Fatimah again, but a Fatimah marked by the plague, with eyes grown dull and sallow face.
Lady Hester's caravan followed the coast. At St. Jean d'Acre the curious admiration of the crowd was transformed into a salutary fear for the Syt who enjoyed so much influence at the Court of the Sultan. The doctor, who had naturally remained behind and naturally been overtaken by a storm—already in returning from Damascus he had been buried in a tempest of snow—arrived soaked and in a bad temper at the encampment at Haifa, and was disagreeably surprised to find in the dining-tent a rough and dirty individual.
Rather tall, with bold and haughty features and the remains of good looks travestied by dirt, he wore long and dirty hair and a Spanish surtout of the most shabby description. His mutilated left hand was making ostensible efforts to disappear beneath a red handkerchief, while his right hand flourished a Bible recklessly.
General Loustaunau presented himself to the considerably astonished doctor, who recognised him, by his way of saluting, for a Frenchman.
General he was, but in the Indies, and he did not require pressing to relate his history, which approached, perhaps a little artificially, the epopee.
Of a family of poor peasants of the Pyrenees, he was born at the little town of Aïdens. Early, he intended to seek his fortune in America, but on arriving at Bordeaux and learning that a ship was about to sail for the Indies, he suddenly changed his mind and joined it as a sailor. The Sartine weighed anchor in September, 1777. She carried away a young man more rich in hopes than in cash, but who possessed a fine presence, robust health and an astonishing activity, thanks to which he was going to make his way quickly.
Disembarked at Poonah, he contrived to attract the attention of M. de Marigny, the French Ambassador, who was accustomed to say to him: "You, you are not an ordinary type." The empire of the Mahrattas was at that time a land consecrated to political intrigues. The emperor had been assassinated, leaving an infant son. The Prince Ragova, his brother, who was not perhaps a stranger to the murder, claimed the throne, supported by the English, while the Rajahs Nassaphermis and Sindhia ranged themselves on the side of the legitimate heir.
War having broken out, Loustaunau, who was dying with envy to see a battle, demanded authorisation to go to the Maliratta camp. His reply to M. de Marigny's objections was simple: "If I am killed, well! good day, and it will be finished!"
M. de Marigny gave him a recommendation to General Norolli, a Portuguese who commanded the rajah's artillery. On the field of battle, Loustaunau observed everything and followed with interest the movements of the army. The English were entrenched on an eminence, and had there established batteries which were making great havoc in the ranks of the Mahrattas. Loustaunau observed a height which dominated the enemy's position, and which was easily accessible to the rajah's troops.
To General Norolli, who was passing, Loustaunau pointed out the spot, offering him the possibility of reducing the English artillery to silence. But Norolli, swollen with the distrust which the military man always has for the civilian, shrugged his shoulders before this beardless youth who was presuming to meddle with strategy. However, an old officer, who had heard the conversation, asked him what he thought of their artillery.
"If I were a flatterer," he replied, "I should say that it is excellent; but, as I am not, I permit myself to say that it is detestable."
"Ah, nonsense! and what would you do if you had the command?"
"As for what is the command, I know not the devil a bit about it. But the only thing to do, if I had cannon, is what I have said."
"I shall perhaps be able to give them you. What would you do?"
"I should place them up there, and I swear on my head that it would not take long."
The Frenchman's assurance, his determination, his audacity, made an impression on the officer, who brought Loustaunau before Sindhia.
"Let them give him ten pieces of artillery and the best gunners," said Sindhia. "Only let him make haste, for the situation is infernal."
Rapidly placed in position, Loustaunau's cannon caused the ammunition waggons of the enemy to explode, throwing the English camp into disorder, and certainly deciding the fate of the battle. Congratulated by the rajah, who offered him presents and a command in his army, Loustaunau declined both before returning to M. de Marigny. Scarcely had he left Sindhia's tent than he was rudely apostrophised by General Norolli, green with concentrated and suppressed rage.
"Who has authorised you, Monsieur," cried he, "to present yourself to the rajah without my permission? You are well aware that it is I who introduce all Europeans."
"General, I went in response to a summons from his Highness. If you were enraged because I have been fortunate enough to render him a small service, do not forget that it was to you first of all that I pointed out the site of the battery. You refused to listen to me, and if others after you have followed my advice, it is your fault and not mine."
"Monsieur, you would deserve that I put this whip about your shoulders."
"Your anger is taking away your reason, General. If you have some blows of a whip to deal out, reserve them for your Portuguese; the French are not accustomed to receive them."
Norolli laid his hand on his pistol, but Loustaunau was watching him and was ready to throw himself upon him. Officers separated them.
Some weeks later, M. de Marigny having been recalled to France, Loustaunau accepted the rajah's offer. He raised a corps of 2000 men, called "the French detachment," of which he reserved to himself the absolute and uncontrolled command, and, at the head of his wild Rohillas, he performed wonders. The English were obliged to sign peace, delivering up Ragova and engaging to restore all the strong towns which they had captured.
Brave, clear-sighted, of sound political views, thoroughly qualified to command, this little peasant had in him the stuff of which a leader is made, and so well did he distinguish himself that he was appointed general of Sindhia's troops. He was not going to remain long inactive, for the English, faithful to the astute tactics which they had adopted in the Indies, employed in turn the troops of Bengal, those of Bombay and those of Coromandel. In this way, the treaties of the one appeared not to bind the others and they escaped serious reverses, while profiting by their partial successes. Soon General Garderre, at the head of 15,000 sepoys of Bengal, invaded the Mahratta country. But Loustaunau was on the watch, and the enemy's army was completely routed. It was at the end of a murderous combat that a stray ball carried away Loustaunau's left hand. He had a silver hand carved for himself of ingenious workmanship. Clever idea, for the bonzes prostrated themselves as he passed along, whispering opportune prophecies announcing that "it was written in the Temple of Siva that the Mahrattas would attain their highest point of glory under a man who had come from far countries of the West, who would wear a silver hand and be invincible." Then he tasted the intoxicating joy of popularity and, what was better, the Imperial favours. He lived in a palace furnished in Eastern style, with thirty elephants, five hundred horses, and servants in profusion. Two colossal silver hands placed at his gate informed all the Hindus of his glorious titles.
But the tenacious English launched a third army under the command of General Camac. Loustaunau annihilated it, as he had the two others. In vain Camac tried to withstand him; the sepoys, terrified by the fearlessness of the Mahrattas and by the colossal silver hands which served them as banners, beat a retreat. Loustaunau had paid dearly for the victory; he had been wounded in the shoulder and in the foot. General Camac, charmed by his courage, sent him his own surgeon to operate on him. But Loustaunau declined his services, not wishing, said he, to owe anything to his enemies. The rajahs proclaimed him, "the Lion of the State and the Tiger in war." His renown extended rapidly through the Indies, and some Frenchmen who were serving in the English army deserted in order to go to him. The English sent an officer, Mr. Quipatrick, to demand the fugitives. Loustaunau refused to give them up. Sindhia sent him an order to obey. Then he proposed to Mr. Quipatrick to follow him into the camp of the Rohillas to receive the deserters. He ordered the signal to saddle to be sounded, and the Rohillas drew their sabres.
"They demand your brothers," said he, "and those whom a noble confidence has brought to you; are you willing to give them up?... As for me, so long as my right hand will be able to handle a sabre, never will I give up my countrymen to death."
The English officer was obliged to go back again with an empty bag.
However, a swarm of fellow-countrymen—the rumour of his fortune had reached Béarn—pounced down, one fine morning, upon his cake. He shared generously with them and found a place for them in brilliant affairs. Between two campaigns, he had married Mlle. Poulet, daughter of a French officer who had not been successful and was vegetating sadly in the Indies.
Loustaunau had, however, difficult times. Having aroused the jealousy of a vizier who refused him subsidies, he was obliged, during a war against the Prince of Lahore, to provide, at his own expense, the pay and the revictualling of his troops. To put an end to such abuses, he galloped so far as Delhi, threatened the vizier with his pistols and compelled him to sign an order for 4,500,000 rupees to reimburse him.
Sooner or later, the exile hears the call of country. Eighteen years of adventurous life had not made Loustaunau forget the sweetness of certain summer evenings in the valleys of the Pyrenees. Suddenly, he decided to return. In a few days he realised 8,000,000 rupees, which he had transferred to France, through the agency of M. Dewerines, a merchant at Chandernagore. To the Catholic church at Delhi he left lands which were worth a rental of 30,000 rupees and assured the fortune of all his comrades in glory. He took leave of Sindhia, who made him the most brilliant promises in order to retain him.
"Thy departure," said he, "means the triumph of the English, the ruin of thy new country; thine was ungrateful; it did not know thy worth, since thou didst arrive here poor. The Mahrattas will, moreover, do for thee four times more than they have done. Thou art as powerful as I am; I love thee as my father. Thus thou canst not think of leaving us."
But Loustaunau listened to no one; he took his departure, surrounded by an immense population, which gave vent to loud lamentations, for the protection of the bonzes had made of him a being almost divine.
Good fortune grew weary of following him and abandoned him on his departure from the Indies. Starting from that moment, checks and reverses will succeed to successes and triumphs with a mathematical precision. Bad passage of seven months. Arrival at Versailles. Loustaunau had truly chosen his hour well! The Revolution was scenting bankruptcy. And the beautiful millions of the East melted like snow in the sun. He was paid in assignats, and scarcely drew 200,000 francs from this fine financial operation. Without being discouraged, he established a foundry on the frontiers of Spain; but the wars ruined it completely. He dispersed gradually all the valuable jewels which he had brought back from the Indies and formed the vigorous resolution to start again for Delhi to seek the wreck of his fortune. He left at Tarbes five children, three sons and two daughters. A magnificent ruby, the last gift of Sindhia, which he had pawned at Paris, was to pay the expenses of the journey.
Not being able to find in Egypt the facilities he desired to embark for India, he proceeded to Syria, with the intention of joining the caravan which left Damascus for Bassora. But he fell dangerously ill at Acre. His intellectual faculties, affected by so many extraordinary events, broke down in an alarming fashion. He was seized by a religious exaltation and by an unfortunate devotion, for he distributed to his neighbours the money which remained to him. And Loustaunau lived on alms in a miserable hut in the orchards of Acre. "The Lion of the State and the Tiger in war" wandered miserably across the country. Having retained, the recollection of the brilliant part which prophecies had played in his splendid past, he was seized with a passion for the Bible, and made it his study to find a link between present events and ancient narrations. People called him "the prophet" and respected his inoffensive folly.
On learning of the arrival of Lady Hester, he had hastened to her, armed with a thousand sacred texts announcing her coming. He imagined, besides, that she was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he was not embarrassed to give another direction to his prophecies. Lady Hester received him very cordially, divining immediately what marvellous advantage she might derive, not from his flashes of lucidity which revealed the keen good sense of the peasant, lofty sentiments and an astonishing memory, but from his Biblical extravagances. In consequence, she bestowed upon him alms in abundance. Mentally, she already relegated Pierre to the rank of minor prophet.
Loustaunau withdrew soon in torrents of rain. The tents were overturned like umbrellas, and Lady Hester had two narrow escapes of being buried under her own. But it was said that that evening the doctor did not have a moment's respite and that the march past of frightened people did not cease. Towards midnight they came to inform him that a Frank had arrived from Acre. He hastened into the dining-tent and found a young Dalmatian who was about to put on the uniform of an officer of the British Navy. Signor Thomaso Coschich—he bore this sonorous name—explained with much importance and volubility that he had been dragoman to the Princess of Wales during her journey from Palermo to Constantinople; that he had crossed the Mediterranean, in the midst of war, on a walnut-shell, so well that the fishermen of Cyprus had not recovered from their astonishment, and that he had come to find Lady Hester to take her back to England.
Then he handed to the dumbfounded doctor despatches from Sir Sydney Smith, of the highest importance, and which would not suffer any delay. Lady Stanhope was charged to transmit several letters to the Emir Bechir. There were many things in these letters, in truth. Sir Sydney Smith began by reproaching the emir harshly with having allowed the eyes of his nephews to be put out (Bechir had charged himself with the business). "I hope," wrote he, "that you will not deprive them of your protection; I hold you responsible to me for their safety." He demanded the 15,000 men which Bechir had promised to furnish to hunt down the pirates of Algiers. He sent him their banners and the plans of campaign approved by Austria, Russia, Prussia, France, the Emperor of Morocco and the Dey of Tunis—nothing except that. Finally, being very much in debt and in a most precarious situation, he reckoned on Lady Hester, his dear cousin, to obtain a little loan from her Syrian friends!
Lady Hester, congratulating herself on having put her nose into this correspondence, which smelt of powder, suspended for three days the march of the caravan, in order to compose her answers and to get rid as quickly as possible of the embarrassing personality of Thomaso Coschich. This imbecile, in order to get the gates of Acre to open to him during the night, had declared that war was about to be declared between Russia and Turkey, and that, as England was taking an important part in it, he was to conduct Lady Hester to a place of safety. True Knight of Fortune, indiscreet, noisy, quarrelsome, swollen with vanity, loud in bragging, his rodomontades produced a disastrous effect on the Turks, who rarely understand pleasantry and never ridicule.
Lady Hester decided to put a stop to the negotiations and wrote to Sir Sydney Smith that his idea was stupid; that Bechir had too many enemies to deprive himself of 15,000 men like that; that his men did not fight well except with their mountains behind them, which they would not consent to leave; that it was impossible, however, to carry them away with them, and that, moreover, as Bechir possessed no port, he would have to obtain the authorisation of the Pacha of Acre to embark them. And, alluding to the frightful banners in German cotton-cloth which Sir Sydney Smith had sent, she inquired who was the king of pocket-handkerchiefs.
Beyond that, she immediately despatched copies of Sir Sydney Smith's letters and her own to Mr. Liston (Constantinople) and Mr. Barker (Aleppo), begging the latter to stop all the letters which he might suppose were coming from Sir Sydney Smith to the Emir Bechir. Bechir made faces at the passage relating to his nephews, but he broke out into a cold sweat when he thought of all the vexations which the absurd intervention of the Commodore might have brought upon him but for the prudent and circumspect conduct of Lady Hester. The Porte was not to be trifled with when an alliance with European nations was in question, and his head would have leaped like a cork.
As for the presents, they denoted a complete misunderstanding of the customs, policy and religions of the East. Sir Sydney Smith sent Abu Gosh a pair of pistols—at a time when the Turks, when they received arms from England, wanted English arms—the Emir Bechir, a black satin abaye—it was just as though someone had offered Sir Sydney Smith a pair of cretonne breeches—to his wife a work-basket; to the library of Jerusalem (there was not one) a Bible; to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a portrait of the Pope, when all the sects which were tearing away the Holy Places had nothing in common except their quarrels.
The Emir Bechir received the presents graciously, but did not exhibit them, nor did he ever speak of them, and it is probable that his sons no longer demanded news of Sir Sydney Smith from all travelling Europeans at Beit-ed-Dui, as they had done up to the present.
At Jaffa, a firman of Soliman ordered Mohammed Aga to accompany Lady Hester. How he would have liked to transfer the duty to another! For Lady Hester, remembering his apathy in 1812, treated him with the most utter disdain, crushing him beneath a contempt fallen from very high, opposing a wooden countenance to all his advances. It was an antipathy justified by the vile and base character of Mohammed. He had always been protected by Soliman, who had appointed him to Jaffa. Some months later, the Pacha of Tripoli being dead, Soliman demanded this dignity for his favourite. The Grand Vizier received at the same time a despatch from Mohammed, who demanded the place occupied by Soliman, who, he wrote, was "incapable, old and an invalid." The Vizier contented himself by sending this letter to Soliman, with these words: "That is the man for whom you demand the title of pacha with two tails!"
What a departure! The Governor of Jaffa and his suite, the Capugi Bachi and his officers, Mr. Catafago (carried off on his way from Acre), Malim Musa (who had just arrived), Damiani, the doctor, Beaudin, the dragomans, the interpreters, the cooks! An escort of a hundred dark-faced Hawarys horsemen. Lady Hester, in a palanquin of crimson velvet drawn by two white mules, preceded by her mare and her donkeys, saddled and ready for her to mount, if she showed the desire to do so. The army of camels vanishing beneath the picks, the mattocks, the spades, the wheelbarrows, the ropes with which they were laden; the crowd of water-carriers and torch-bearers. The twenty sumptuous tents given by Soliman, one particularly of magnificent dimensions, of a green colour, ornamented by chimeras and yellow stars, double like the calix and the corolla of a flower turned upside down, attracted the attention of all. It was the tent which the Princess of Wales will render famous and which was to play an important part at the time of that scandalous trial of 1820, in which George IV—very far, however, from having a stainless private life!—will have the impudence to come to parade all these stories of the alcove and to make march past all that rabble of hired witnesses: Swiss, Germans, Italians particularly, for the simple pleasure of being disembarrassed of his wife!
Three messengers galloped in advance of the caravan. The inhabitants of the villages were turned out to leave the place for her. The Moslem governors bent under the will of a woman in a fanatical country. Ah! truly she was able to cry, five years later, in recalling this journey:
"The wife of that poor King (George IV) came to Syria to pass as an obscure Englishwoman, while Lady Hester played there the part which the Princess of Wales ought never to have abandoned!"
The green and blue tents rose amongst the stones and took by assault the ruins of Ascalon. They were extremely comfortable, and nowhere in Syria had the doctor found better fare. On April 3,1815, the hundred peasants who had been requisitioned in the environs began the work of excavation to the south of the mosque. The first blows of the mattock brought to light earthenware and fragments of a column of no interest. On the 4th, the picks met with a resistance, and a magnificent statue of mutilated marble was gently drawn out. It was the body of a warrior of colossal dimensions, measuring six feet nine inches from shoulder to heel, and of a very beautiful shape. The doctor will conjecture that it belonged to the Herodean epoch, and the head of Medusa which ornamented the chest induced him to think that he was in the presence of a deified king. The next day cisterns were discovered. Finally, on the 8th, great excitement! Two stone angels cemented by four columns of grey granite were unearthed. Surely the treasure was within! Labour in vain, hopes deceived; they were empty, completely empty!
The doctor, to console Lady Hester, spoke words of comfort to her.
"In the eyes of lovers of Art," said he, "all the treasures of the world are not worth your statue. Later on, visitors to Ascalon will stand in astonishment before the remains of antiquity snatched from the past by a woman."
But Lady Hester, whose unexpected actions were continually disconcerting those who believed that they knew her best, answered coldly:
"That is perhaps true, but it is my intention to break this statue into a thousand pieces and to throw it into the sea, just to avoid such a report being spread, and that I may not lose at the Porte the merit of my disinterestedness."
And this was done, despite all the murmurs and all the protestations. The ruins, starting from that moment, seemed to avenge themselves for this act of savage vandalism, and the workmen found nothing more; they laughed in their sleeves. The check was complete. The site indicated had been excavated and re-excavated. Lady Hester consoled herself by the thought that Djezzar Pacha had anticipated her, under the pretext of seeking materials for his mosque. She accepted the defeat, but she did not admit as victor anyone except the Red Pacha, the only adversary worthy of her.
What was harder, was that England refused to know anything. The expenses remained charged to Lady Hester. It is true that she wrote at that time letters like this:
"Since I well knew that it [the statue] would be admired by English travellers, I gave orders for it to be broken to bits, in order that malicious tongues might not proceed to relate that I am searching for statues for my countrymen, and not for treasures for the Sultan."
It would discourage, at any rate, people better disposed!
Lady Hester, grumbling the while, got out of the difficulty of the Ascalon expenses by the aid of economy. At that moment, she boasted of not having a debt.
TIRED in body and irritated in mind, Lady Hester revived at Mar-Elias. At that moment, Pierre Ruffin, French chargé d'affaires at Constantinople, an intimate friend of the amiable Pouqueville, had his eye on the Englishwoman and warned Caulaincourt, whom he supposed to be still Minister for Foreign Affairs, that definitely settled in Syria, "whose climate sympathised better with her frail health, the illustrious traveller had received from Great Britain presents to distribute to the local authorities of the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, under the ostensible motive of her personal gratitude for the courtesies which they had lavished upon her." Was he in ignorance, then, that England had refused to share in the Ascalon expenses?
Sometimes, she dreamed of forming an association of men of letters, artists and savants which she would invite to travel all over the Orient under her auspices. She aimed at founding an Institute, on the model of that which Bonaparte had carried away to Egypt, and of which she would naturally be the head. Leaving the women to groan and sigh at the doors of the Academies, she was leaping the barrier of ancient customs and traditional manners and creating on her own level. Sometimes, she discussed the expediency of a journey in Abyssinia. Sometimes, she drew up memoirs on the marvellous properties of bezoar in the cases of the plague and mania. From time to time, she cast a glance towards that Europe from which she had fled without regrets. Sharply, she judged her fellow-countrymen, stigmatised emphatically the English statesmen as "senseless boobies whom their ignorance and their duplicity have exposed, not only to the laughter, but to the maledictions of generations present and to come," traced of the Restoration a picture engraved by a master hand and denounced the English policy against France, a policy of which she unmasked the faults with a singular perspicacity and an impartial violence.
"Cease to trouble yourself in regard to me," she was to write on April 22, 1816, to the Marquis of Buckingham. "I shall never return to Europe, even if I were reduced to beg my bread here. Once only I shall go to France to see you, James and you; but I shall go to Provence, not to Paris, for the sight of our odious Ministers running about everywhere to do evil, would make my gorge rise too much. I shall not be martyr for nothing. The granddaughter of Lord Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt, feels herself blush at being English. What disgrace to be born in that country which has made of its cursed gold the counterpoise of justice, which has placed humanity in fetters—that country which has employed valiant troops, intended to defend its national honour, as an instrument of vengeance to oppress a free people, which has exposed to ridicule and humiliation a monarch who might have gained the hearts of his subjects, if the English intriguers had left him alone to reign or abdicate.
"You tell me that the French army—the bravest in the world, that which has made more sacrifices for its national honour than no matter what other—would not listen to the voice of reason; and you think that I should believe it! Never! If a woman, poor and miserable like myself, has produced a very strong impression on thousands of savage Arabs, as I have done, without even bearing the name of chief, simply by surrendering to some of their prejudices and in inspiring in them confidence in her sincerity and in the purity of her intentions, is not, then, a king—a legitimate king—able to bring this army, to which he owes his crown, to a just appreciation of its duty? Undoubtedly, he would have been able to do it and would have done it, if he had been free to act. What ought one to expect from men who, during twenty-five years, have been their most bitter enemies, except what has happened?
"You may be disgusted; I care for that not more than a penny; for there is no soul on earth who has had, or will ever have, any influence on my thoughts and actions."
She maintained also a connected correspondence with all the people who knew how to hold a pen. Beaudin galloped across mountains and valleys. It was no sinecure that of being her secretary! One day, sent on a mission to St. Jean d'Acre, he slept in a mill in the environs of Tyre with, he declared, his head on his luggage and his horse's bridle in his hand. Nevertheless, in the morning, the horse had disappeared. Painfully he continued his journey, and received on the way a laconic letter from Lady Hester: "If you have lost your mare, find her."
In this eddying of eccentric ideas, the doctor did not see any trace of projects favourable to a return to Europe. Six years of peregrinations across the East had surfeited his taste for travel, and six years of solitude—solitude mitigated, it is true, by the passing of foreigners of distinction—with even a superior woman, had made him hungry for social life and worldly pleasures. Being circumspect, he ventured lightly on the burning ground of a probable return. Lady Hester loved the unexpected; she listened, smiled, approved and sent dare-dare Giorgio to find a medical man in England willing to come to her. She even gave the doctor permission to make a tour in Egypt. He passed two months there and met Sheik Ibraham Burckhardt. At Alexandria, his joy exploded noisily in regard to the splendid parties and evening conversaziones, and that without the least remorse. Had he not left at Mar-Elias a substitute doctor worthy of all confidence, a certain Signor Volpi. This Italian, formerly in Holy Orders, had taken advantage of the Revolution to throw off the cowl and to dance with enthusiasm round the tree of Liberty. This occupation not being sufficiently lucrative, he embarked for Syria, having taken care to provide himself with a syringe and a sugar-loaf hat, these insignia being necessary to be well received. Lady Hester often appealed to his judgments on humanity in general.
The calm in which the doctor was delighting was abruptly broken so soon as he returned from Egypt by one of those storms so heavy with threats in which the caprices of Lady Hester excelled.
From Tripoli to Antioch, between the Orontes and the sea, there runs a chain of ragged and gloomy mountains, the Ansaries Mountains. Bald rocks, dark and musty ravines, fallen ground retained by stunted trees twisting themselves into an eternal spasm, chaos and ruins. To these wild and enigmatical landscapes, which are covered by miasmas risen from the marshes and the ponds, from corpses of men and animals which decompose side by side, chosen inhabitants are necessary. In the Ansaries Mountains lived the Assassins (Hashishim)! The Assassins! Obscure association, vast freemasonry, surrounded by the hatred of all peoples, both Christians and Moslems, seeking the ruin of Islam, mysterious sect which mingles, in blood and poison, the most ascetic mysticism, the most ridiculous charlatanism and the most implacable cruelty.
Ah! how the recollections of history haunt those deep gorges which gash and wound the earth and furrow it with wounds, the lips of which seems to draw together the better to preserve their terrible secret!
It is in these narrow valleys, where the light creeps in like a spectre; amidst these lofty crags which time carries away joyously by scraps, that the fierce mountaineers so feared by the troops of the Sultan are entrenched. They are tributaries of the Pachas of Tripoli and Damascus, but their obedience is uncertain, and no collector of taxes dares to get himself involved on their great tracks which end often in a cul-de-sac. Misfortune follows the imprudent person who would venture into the mountain! From castles encamped on the edge of abysses death would descend. And not the violent and honourable death which a combat, even an unequal one, gives, but the unforeseen, insidious death which slowly scents the victim, watches him unweariedly and awaits him in the perfume of a poisoned nosegay, in the clear water of a contaminated spring, in the most impressive cares of a servant who has sold himself. Kalaat Masjaf! Kalaat Quadinous! Kalaat el Kaf! eagles' nests hewn in the living rock, which have an ugly appearance and a sinister memory, lair of bandits where lived, meditated and died that strange Rachid-eddin-Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, who brought from Persia the doctrine of blood and of crime, inspirer of souls, who fanaticised his men up to the love of, the adoration of, death, awakening their energies and casting a spell over their wills up to the most degraded and the most humiliating passivity.
At a distance of seven centuries, the Assassins had not disarmed, and each day brought a new incident to add to their monotonous and sanguinary chronicles. Nevertheless, it was them whom Lady Hester was going to defy, them who had everywhere secret affiliations, everywhere spies, them who knew everything, avenged themselves always and so much the more dangerously that they were totally indifferent to their own lives and considered as an ineffable happiness to die for their cause.
The reason Lady Hester had was a grave one: in the nineteenth century a European traveller could disappear in the Ansaries Mountains without anyone being called to account.
On March 28, 1814, a Frenchman arrived at Sidon and lodged with his consul, M. Taitbout. He was Colonel Boutin, a great friend of Moreau and a very distinguished officer of engineers, who had received the delicate mission of preparing and sounding the ground in the East. Lady Hester had met him at Cairo, and during a dinner party she had turned into ridicule the mysterious air which he affected and had laughingly denounced him as a spy of Bonaparte. One remembers the frightful epidemic of plague in the spring of 1814. In vain Colonel Boutin's friends endeavoured to keep him at Sidon, but he was in a hurry and he left on April 6, leaving as a deposit in trust at Mar-Elias some of his manuscripts. Lady Hester had given him one of her servants, a sure guide and well acquainted with the regions the traveller was to pass through; but unhappily he was carried off by the plague. Colonel Boutin quitted Hama for Latakia. He had informed M. Guys, consul at that town, that he would abandon the ordinary route, which ran northwards so far as Djesrech Chogh, to cut across the Ansaries Mountains. He started—and no one had ever heard of him since.
M. Guys awaited him at first patiently; then he became alarmed. The report of his disappearance reached Lady Hester. She thought that the pachas were going to institute a rigorous inquiry, but the pachas feared too much the famous Assassins to raise a little finger in favour of a foreigner so foolish as to throw himself voluntarily into the wolf's mouth. The months passed. Then Lady Hester made up her mind abruptly. In the East, all travellers are brothers; differences of race and national enmities are abolished. She took in hand the case of Colonel Boutin, whom personally she held, besides, in high esteem. The affair was going all at once to rebound and drag from their tranquillity the unpunished murderers.
In haste, she drew up her plans. An inquiry, in the rotten heart of the Ansaries country, was difficult, impossible. A silence of a year had thickened the mystery. No matter, it would be necessary for her to bring the affair to a head, and she will bring it to a head. All the blood of the Pitts was boiling in this woman, who had truly received from Heaven the gift of command. She chose three men who possessed her confidence: Signor Volpi was sent to Hama. Soliman, a bold and resolute Druse muleteer, and Pierre, recalled from Deiv el Kammar, where he was keeping an inn, started to repeat Colonel Boutin's journey, disguised as old pedlars. They succeeded in their mission, and in October, 1815, when the doctor disembarked from Egypt, he learned that the proofs which had been collected were conclusive, and that the pacha was to be summoned to act. The doctor made the mistake of not being enthusiastic and of talking of revenge, of danger in the future when Lady Hester went riding. Let him not speak in that manner; she will do without him!
She wrote to Soliman pressing letters. The pacha, who was by no means anxious to irritate the Assassins, answered courteously, but evasively, that the troops would not be able to endure a winter campaign in the Ansaries Mountains, but in the spring he would do all that was possible to meet her wishes. Like the fleet sloughis which roll themselves up before relaxing their iron muscles and springing forward, Lady Hester paused to anchor her resolution for ever; then, in a flash, she launched herself towards the goal, but without deigning to cast a glance at the dangers which rose at each step in advance.
The spring blossomed again; Soliman made no move. Lady Hester judged it prudent to refresh his memory, and set out for St. Jean d'Acre with all her servants, covered with armour and costly apparel. To strike the Oriental imagination and convey a lofty idea of her rank and her power, she displayed all the luxury which her resources permitted her. She went straight to Soliman's palace, caused the doors to be opened to her, and made her way so far as the council-chamber where the pacha sat.
She penetrated the crowd, called for silence, explained publicly what had brought her and demanded vengeance. Soliman, astonished, but immovable, lavished compliments and presents upon her. She treated them with contempt, and tried the effects of flying into a great passion, the more redoubtable, inasmuch as she had intended and prepared it, and withdrew, in the midst of general consternation, threatening the pacha with the anger of the Sultan.
Mr. Catafago, the Austrian consul, had offered her his house. Next day Soliman sent to ask her to wait upon him; she refused. As, at the same time, the French authorities at Constantinople began to make a stir, the pacha decided that it was better to allow his hand to be forced. Lady Hester had gained the day.
But there was no question of a simple military promenade. The struggle would be a fierce one, and trained soldiers and an experienced leader were required. Soliman withdrew all the garrison of his pashalik and gave the command to Mustapha Barbar, the energetic Governor of Tripoli. Lady Hester, who followed with increasing interest the mobilisation of the troops, of "her troops," sent him a pair of magnificent English pistols.
"I arm thee, my knight," she wrote. "I have reason to complain of the Ansaries, who have massacred one of my brothers. I hope that these pistols will never fail anyone, that they will protect thy days and will avenge the cause of thy friend."
The choice of Mustapha Barbar was excellent. A brave general and a rigid Mohammedan of sincere conviction, he hated the Assassins with all his soul. He made vibrate amongst his soldiers the religious cord always so dangerous to touch in the East. In a state of religious exaltation, they set out for a holy war, and nothing was to stop them in their work of destruction. No quarter, no mercy. To slay an Assassin was to glorify the Prophet.
The enemy lay in ambush everywhere. Every rock concealed an assailant. Every abyss enticed death. It was necessary to carry the mountain piece by piece, tree by tree, house by house. Booty and blood rendered the fanaticism of the Turks the more violent. The old men and children who fell into their clutches were pitilessly massacred, the women sold as slaves. As for the prisoners, there was none of them.
The mountaineers, surrounded in their lairs, cut off in their last fortresses, perceived with horror that the fierce renown of the Ansaries was crumbling away. Mustapha Barbar ventured to attack one of those savage fortresses at the Kalaat el Kaf, which stood out like a defiance on a cluster of sharp-pointed rocks. Jealously the mountain concealed it, surrounded it, fondled it. For it, it sharpened its broken stones, it made denser its thickets. For it, it multiplied its traps, its slippery burrows, its deep ravines, its treacherous marches. All that Nature could invent to oppose to the march of man, she had lavished in its defiles. Three torrents defended the approach to it, and their beds were deadly and their high banks precipitous.
Nevertheless, Mustapha Barbar, in traversing the bottom of the valley where the foot sank as in a pulp of slimy and poisonous toad-stools, evoked the clear-skinned and blonde Englishwoman, his lady. He took the fortress; he destroyed it from top to bottom and razed its ramparts. He violated the sacred tombs of the Assassins, throwing into the torrents the ashes of the Imans. It is then that the Tartar, bearer of the heads of the vanquished which had been despatched to Constantinople, returned in all haste with an order to put a stop to the butchery. Fifty-two villages burned. Three hundred Assassins massacred.... Lady Hester had been well avenged of Colonel Boutin!
An illustrious traveller, Maurice Barrès, was, a century later, in the course of that marvellous Enquête aux pays du Levant, wherein are resuscitated all the "obscure life," all the "religious heart of Asia," to penetrate in his turn into the depths of the Ansaries Mountains. He looked for traces of Lady Hester, and he passed over the ruins of the Kalaat el Kaf without knowing their tragic secret.
People murmured, afterwards, that the true authors of the crime had escaped; they were too powerful to be reached. No matter, the innocent had paid for the guilty. It was a form of Turkish justice of which Soliman rarely gave the example during his reign. Moreover, Lady Hester thanked him with that matchless grace which she knew how to display when she was pleased.
France did not forget the part which the noble Englishwoman had taken in the affair of Colonel Boutin. After a speech from the Comte Delaborde, the Chamber of Deputies addressed to her its thanks, and assured her of the gratitude of the country. The Courrier français devoted to her, in an article on Colonel Boutin, some moving lines:
"Colonel Boutin was splendidly received by Pitt's niece, Lady Hester Stanhope. Proud of her protection, he was on the point of succeeding in his mission when he was assassinated by the Arabs.... France knows how the murder of this illustrious traveller was avenged by her ladyship, who, by her influence alone and her personal efforts, demanded and obtained the heads of the assassins and the restoration of the luggage of the unfortunate officer."
Shortly after the Ansaries Mountains Expedition, the Princess of Wales arrived in Syria. Lady Hester had no kind of sympathy for her. Faugh! a woman so common, so vulgar, who exhibited herself like an Opera girl and fastened her garter below her knee, how detestable! In the famous quarrels which moved all England she had taken the side neither of the Prince of Wales, a dishonourable rake, nor of Princess Caroline, an impudent and slovenly German! Moreover, she judged it prudent, besides, to stay in the country for some time; the more so that the princess would undoubtedly have paid her a visit out of curiosity, and the expense of receiving her would have been very heavy. She embarked, therefore, on July 18, 1816. For where? No one in the world, save herself, would have had this idea. She went to take refuge in the midst of that very people whom she had just caused to be punished so cruelly. On the way, she bestowed her congratulations upon Mustapha Barbar at Tripoli. She disembarked at the little port of Bussyl, mounted a donkey and arrived at Antioch. Mr. Barker, who came to talk of her affairs, only remained with her a short time. She lived altogether alone, with some cowardly servants, in an abandoned house in the neighbourhood of Antioch. Absolute solitude. Superior people have regarded this attitude as comedy. It was a comedy which lasted seventy days, and might, at any moment, have had death as its epilogue! Who is the actor so stout of heart as to play it up to the end before empty benches?
Can the life of Lady Hester be imagined? The people of the country, by way of encouragement, made to dance around her all the victims of the Assassins. Round of honour in which hundreds who had been poisoned, stabbed, hanged, flayed, strangled, gave each other fraternally the hand. Well-intentioned friends warned her every morning that her life was in danger. As for her, she continued her long rides across the mountain. Sometimes, she halted in a hamlet, assembled the peasants, and informed them, if they did not yet know, that she was the Syt who had caused their relatives to be massacred and their villages to be burned. Then she made them a very impressive speech, telling them that she had avenged the death of a Frenchman, of an enemy of her country, because the cowardly murder of a traveller is an abominable deed which all noble hearts ought to condemn.
Then, it was the silence of the warm nights, the passing of the breeze which refreshed the gardens, the plaintive cry of some jackals quite close at hand. Nevertheless, not a hair fell from her head. The Englishwoman had conquered. The Assassins, astonished at meeting in a woman a contempt for death equal to their own, decided that to respect this life to which she seemed to attach no value would be for them a superior vengeance. They proved themselves, in this case, very profound philosophers. What a magnificent fate, in fact, would have been that of Lady Hester, "the Arab Amazon," according to Barbey d'Aurevilly, "who rode at the gallop out of European civilisation and English routine—that old circus where you turn in a ring—to reanimate her sensations in the peril and independence of the desert," if she had ended in blood in the mountains of the Assassins! She would have disappeared like a brilliant meteor, in the midst of her glory, in the midst of her fortune, leaving behind a trail of heroic legends. She would have escaped the slow agony of Djoun, where, overwhelmed by old age, oblivion and ill-health, she straightened her tall figure to make head against the pack of creditors and Jewish usurers, more filthy in Syria than anywhere else.
At the end of September, Lady Hester returned to Mar-Elias, unharmed. The Princess of Wales had concluded her lamentable journey in the Holy Land, dragging with her that Italian courier Bergami, whom she had bombarded in quick succession with the titles of Baron della Francina, Knight of Malta and Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and whom she had just appointed at Jerusalem Grand Master of St. Caroline, an order which she had created expressly for him, without taking into consideration the impropriety of her action.
Miss Williams and the doctor awaited Lady Hester anxiously. For Miss Williams had disembarked in Syria in March, 1816. Her attachment to her patroness was so great that she could not make up her mind to remain at a distance from her, and, after passing some years at Malta, she had left her sister and had, despite every difficulty—tempest, sea-sickness, mutiny of the crew and a passage of three and a half months—come to rejoin her. Lady Hester's lady's-maid, Ann Fry, awaited Miss Williams when she left the vessel, in order to veil her and to inculcate her with the first instructions relative to the new life. Such was Lady Hester's response to her devotion!
Amongst the visitors to Mar-Elias during that last year, the least commonplace was without question that young Mr. W. J. Bankes, who arrived full of stupid confidence in himself and with a conquering air. Lady Hester received him very amicably, and, learning that it was his intention to go to Palmyra, she gave him letters of recommendation to Muly Ishmael of Hama and to Nasr, son of the Emir of the Anezes. She also offered him old Pierre, who was always brought to the front when it was a question of choosing an experienced guide.
The young man, reckoning on his own resources which he considered abundantly sufficient to get him through the affair, had accepted against his will the letters and old Pierre. Besides, Lady Hester had allowed an imprudent speech to escape, which had not fallen on the ear of a deaf man.
"When I was in the desert," said she, "I arranged with Nasr to give to travellers whom I should protect a letter of safe-conduct which, alone, should be of value; those who were recommended by me verbally were not to be listened to. They will be divided into two classes: ordinary travellers and travellers of distinction in whom the Bedouins will be able to trust as in myself, who will have the right to full hospitality, to mimic combats, to camel's meat. To recognise them easily, the letters of the first will bear a single seal, the second will bear two."
Bankes had nothing more urgent than to open Lady Hester's letter and to make himself acquainted with the contents. When he learned that he was placed in the class of ordinary travellers, that he had received only one seal, and that he was not mentioned either as prince or gentleman, he was disgusted. Ah! ah! this old sorceress imagined that she held the desert routes; she was going to see how he would dispense with her. And the young man, abandoning the letters and old Pierre at Hama, started proudly on the way, under the protection of the Pacha of Damascus.
The return was less brilliant! Stopped by Nasr at Mount Belaz, and having refused to pay for the right to pass, he had been courteously conducted back to Hama. Sticking to his resolution, like an Englishman who is on the point of losing a wager or whose vanity is at stake, he took a second time the road to Palmyra. This time he paid without complaint the 1100 piastres demanded by Nasr. But scarcely had he arrived at Palmyra, than another son of Mehannah demanded the same sum. Incensed, Bankes refused to understand anything, and was thrown into prison. On his return to England, he placed all his misadventures to the account of Lady Hester, proclaiming everywhere that she took a malicious pleasure in closing the gates of the desert to travellers. It is thus that History is written.
In the company of M. Regnault, French consul at Tripoli, a little man, ugly and hunchbacked, but remarkably pleasant and intelligent, who passed some time at Mar-Elias, Lady Hester visited the French consulate at Sidon. The new consul, M. Ruffin, was the son of the chargé d'affaires at Constantinople. And the crowd gave Lady Hester an enthusiastic reception. Everyone wanted to see this extraordinary woman who had raised an entire province to avenge on the Ansaries the assassination of a Frenchman.
On October 28, Didot, son of the celebrated printer of Paris, passed through Sidon and was invited to go up to the convent. Finding himself in the presence of two Orientals squatting on a divan, he recognised Lady Hester by her beardless face and Regnault by his hump. Lady Hester did not ask him to issue a new edition of her travels, divining well that, contrary to the habits of printers, Didot would give her a great publicity. And he did not fail to add a zero to the 3000 piastres which the expedition to Palmyra had cost.
On November 15, Giorgio brought back the surgeon N——-, Dr. Meryon's successor. The twenty-seven trunks which he had brought were landed without examination on the part of the Custom House, mark of consideration from which it never departed throughout Lady Hester's residence in Syria.
Giorgio affected a profound dislike of England. The Duke of York was his intimate friend, and Princess Charlotte of Wales had sent him a silver chain. "I shall certainly wear it," said he, "but I shall not say whence it comes, in order not to give the Turks so pitiful an idea of English hospitality." One thing only had struck him: there were no fleas and the people did not tell lies. Having seen at Chevening a portrait of Chatham, he told Lady Hester that her face bore an astonishing resemblance to that of her grandfather, which overwhelmed her with pleasure.
Then Dr. Meryon thought of departing. He was affected in taking leave of Lady Hester, but excellent provision for the journey, gazelle-pie, tarts and cold fowls—delicate attention on the part of Miss Williams—soon restored his equanimity.
He embarked on January 21, 1817, believing certainly that he would never return. Ah! assuredly he had desired this hour with all his soul, but one does not leave a woman like Lady Hester without regrets. He had just closed a dazzling page of his life. The mauve terraces of Bairout sprawling at the foot of Lebanon were vanishing in the rays of the setting sun. Ah! would he ever be able to forget the marches into the desert at the head of the Arab tribes; and the assistance exacted by the governors of Syria to open the earth and to snatch its treasures from it; and the troops launched into the inaccessible defiles to avenge the disappearance of a traveller?
The East leaves in the heart a perfume of dead roses, which is quite sufficient to transform into a posy of recollections set with pearls the incidents of travel.... It is sometimes a flash of vivid sunlight on a load of oranges, sometimes a burst of laughter from a brown and dirty child, sometimes the dust of roads in summer, sometimes the peppery odour which the spice-merchants exhale....
THE END