Lady Hester Stanhope

THE CIRCE OF THE
DESERTS

BY

PAULE HENRY-BORDEAUX

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

LONDON

HURST & BLACKETT, LTD.

PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. [Farewell to England]
II. [Mediterranean Yachting]
III. [Oriental Initiation]
IV. [Excursion in the Holy Land]
V. [In the Country of Djezzar Pacha and the Emir Bechir]
VI. [Far niente at Damascus]
VII. [Lady Hester and Lascaris]
VIII. [The Queen of Palmyra]
IX. [From the Temple of Baalbeck to the Ruins of Ascalon]
X. [In the Mountains of the Assassins]

THE CIRCE OF THE DESERTS

CHAPTER I
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND

ON February 10, 1810, the frigate Jason, commander James King,—left Portsmouth, bound for Gibraltar. In the stern of the vessel, a group of four persons watched the coast, which was enveloped in a clinging mist which the meagre English sun could not contrive to absorb, gradually recede into the distance. Three men stood a little apart from a woman whose gigantic stature must not have passed unnoticed, even on British soil.

She was six feet in height and was developed in proportion. Strangers who met her for the first time allowed their astonished and mocking eyes to wander at random and to lose their way over the vast surface which she offered to the admirers of bulk, but when they had succeeded in reaching the face, pale and passionate flower borne by a robust stalk, they were interested, captivated, subjugated, dazzled! What wonderful surprise, after the difficult and monotonous ascent of a lofty peak, to discover boundless fields of fresh snow, sparkling with light!...

More strange than beautiful, this woman attracted attention, and those who had gazed upon her features never forgot them. Can one say that the sun is beautiful when its fires blind? Thus everything about her glittered; her skin dazzling as marble, of which it possessed the pure grain and the cold smoothness, her eyes of a pale and frosty grey which were illuminated by a terrifying and wild glitter when passion roused her and which was heightened by a bluish ring.... Everything about her was striking: her lips, of a dark red, firm and strong in shape, her dazzling teeth, her curved nose, her obstinate chin. A northern light seemed to play on this lofty and superb forehead, on this countenance of a perfect oval, and isolated her in crowning her as a queen ... or as a madwoman....

What age could she be? Some thirty years hardly. Perhaps more, for the corners of the mouth, a trifle fallen in, had a wrinkle of bitterness and disenchantment which accused her of being older.

At this moment she was gazing at the north with a singular intensity of expression, and when England had disappeared in its wrappings of mist, smiling and satisfied she triumphantly wagged her foot; a foot so long and so arched that a kitten might easily run about on it.... She crossed the bridge and went to lean her elbow on the bow of the ship. Had she a presentiment that her departure would be definitive, eternal, and that she would never more behold the green forest trees of Chevening or the fine equipages of Bond Street?

Lady Hester Stanhope was born on March 12, 1776, of the marriage of Hester, sister of William Pitt, with Charles, Lord Mahon, afterwards third Earl Stanhope, the frenzied Republican. Her ancestors, both paternal and maternal, were not ordinary people. Her grandfather, Lord Chatham, had, by the side of his great intellectual faculties, the detestable mania of enveloping the most anodyne acts of life with an impenetrable mystery which kept all his entourage on the alert and in suspense. Had he not one day when he was unwell, refused to receive a man, the bearer of urgent news, who insisted on seeing him immediately? After long discussions, the messenger contrived to be introduced into the Minister's room; but the room was darkened and the Minister invisible behind a rampart of screens. New battle to succeed in catching sight of Lord Chatham. At last, when the man had by main force gained this honour, he drew from his pocket a parchment containing the title-deeds of two estates with a rent-roll of £14,000, bequeathed by Sir Edward Pynsent as a proof of his admiration. The property had nearly escaped him. Lady Hester Stanhope, if she did not inherit Burton Pynsent, inherited, at any rate, all these eccentricities of character.

As for her other grandfather, he was that second Earl Stanhope who had forbidden his son to powder his hair on the occasion of his presentation at Court, "because," he pretended, "wheat was too dear." So that Lord Mahon went quite simply into the presence of the King with his natural head of hair, that is to say, black as coal and lightened by a white plume, which caused the spiteful tongue of Horace Walpole to remark that "he had been tarred and feathered."

This misadventure did not prevent the young man from marrying, the same year, Lady Hester Pitt. The great Chatham entertained the highest opinion of his son-in-law.

"The exterior is pleasing," wrote he to Mr. James Grenville, "but it is in looking within that one finds invaluable treasures, a head to imagine, a heart to conceive and an arm to execute all that he can have there which is good, amiable and of good report."

By this marriage, he had three daughters: the extraordinary Hester, Griselda and Lucy Rachel. Left a widower five years later, he contracted a second marriage, with Louisa Grenville, by whom he had three children: Philip Henry; Charles, who was killed at Coruña; and James Hamilton, inspired no doubt by the spirit of equity, for he was a thorough Republican.

Grave political differences which arose from 1784 between Stanhope and Pitt sensibly cooled their friendship. The French Revolution separated them entirely. Lord Stanhope threw himself with ardour into the Opposition, through conviction at first, and then because he hated the victorious party, merely because it was the victorious party. He loved to act with a little minority, and, this tendency continually increasing, earned him in the House of Lords the surname of "the Minority of One."

From his childhood at Geneva he had preserved the taste for the exact sciences, and he attached his name to several scientific discoveries, of which the most astonishing was that of steam navigation. His children alone did not interest him. Lady Hester Stanhope, who inherited from him her love of independence and the uncompromising nature of her ideas, played the very devil, terrorising her governesses. From 1800 to 1803 she lived with the old Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, of illustrious memory, and her skill in protecting her brothers and sisters from the paternal experiments having attracted the attention of her uncle, William Pitt, he asked her to come and keep house for him. She was then twenty-seven.

This singular young girl, down to the death of the "Great Commoner" in January, 1806, was truly his confidante, his secretary, his right arm. Remarkably intelligent, bold and original, she played the part of a second Prime Minister. Pensions, titles, favours passed through her hands. Thrown back brusquely into the shade, after her uncle's death, she was unable to endure the tameness of an ordinary life. After some years of solitude in Wales, disgusted with the world and politics, she resolved to leave this England which was too prompt to forget.

Of the three men who had embarked with her on the Jason, one was her brother, James Hamilton Stanhope, captain in the 1st Foot Guards, who was going to rejoin his regiment at Cadiz; another, a friend, Mr. Nassau Sutton; and the last, a young doctor, Charles Meryon, who, instead of growing musty in the lecture-rooms of Oxford, was departing joyously for milder climes.

Between two showers—they were numerous!—Lady Hester Stanhope came and sat down on the bridge. She would have wished to forget; she would have wished to break with the past, at once too beautiful and too sad; but recollections rolled in upon her, countless invading waves which moaned and beat against the shores of her soul.

What had she left behind her which was worthy of regrets? Two sisters with whom she had never been in the least intimate, an insignificant brother, an old maniac father, altogether mad and democrat besides, which is the worst of mental aberrations. Singular old fellow truly, who slept, in winter, with wide-open windows!

Lady Hester reviewed the sad days of her neglected childhood. Her stepmother was an insipid creature, without interest in anything, who divided her time—Oh! in a very equal way—between her toilet-table and her box at the Opera. And during this time, Lord Stanhope hurried from his iron hand-press to his factory for making artificial tiles to exclude the snow and the rain, sprang to his reckoning-machine, from there rushed to his dockyard, where a steamboat was always on the look-out and always refused to move, entered, on the way, the Old Jewry, where some members of the Revolution Society were ready to submit to a speech, and drew up in return a motion to be brought forward in the House of Lords in order to prevent England from interfering in the internal government of France!... One childish recollection haunted Lady Hester until she was tired.

The scene? A London street transformed into a sea of mud by an unusually mild winter. The personages? A little girl perched on enormous stilts and very much at her ease up there, to be sure! An old gentleman, tall and spare, leaning out of a window, using forcible language and gesticulating. The little girl went up to the first floor. Earl Stanhope was in a good temper that morning; after having dispersed his gold and silver plate and his tapestries, which exhaled a too aristocratic mustiness, he had just sold off his horses and carriages. With his bare feet thrust into slippers, and wearing under his dressing-gown his beloved silk breeches which never left him day or night, he was contentedly munching the piece of brown bread which with him took the place of breakfast.

"Well, little girl," was his greeting; "what is it that you want to say? On what devil had you climbed just now?"

"Oh, papa! Since you have no more horses, I wanted to practise walking in the mud with stilts. Mud, you know, is all the same to me; it is that poor Lady Stanhope who will find it trying; she is accustomed to her carriage, and her health is not first-rate."

"What is that you say, little girl? What would you say if I bought a carriage for Lady Stanhope?"

"Well, papa, I should say that it is very amiable of you."

"Well, well, we will see. But, by all the devils, no armorial bearings!"

Hester revived the scene with a distinctness which distance strengthened. She recalled even the carriage which Lady Stanhope had owed to the famous stilts; for her astonishing memory, like that of her grandfather, Lord Chatham, forgot neither things, nor animals nor people.

Memories rolled in upon her still. Willingly, Hester paused longer over those which had been proud or pleasant hours. She conjured up delightful evenings in London. Was it indeed she who was attending it seemed but yesterday the Duchess of Rutland's ball?

Before leaving Downing Street, she had gone to find her uncle, William Pitt, in his study. While he was finishing the signing of a paper, she arranged before a mirror the folds of her gown, of white satin draped in the antique fashion which blended with her snow-white shoulders. Suddenly she perceived that the Minister's attentive eye was following her movements.

"Really, Hester," said he, "you are going to make conquests this evening, but would it be too presumptuous to suggest to you that this fold ought to be caught up by a loop? There! like this. What do you think about it?"

And his taste was so delicate, that he had found instinctively what was required to complete the classic form of the drapery.

What a crowd at the duchess's! The heads all touched one another like the necks of bottles emerging from a basket.

And what long faces!

Ah! it is that English society was prodigiously bored. Boredom, that pastime of old peoples rotted by civilisation, reigned as master and triumphed hardly over the conventions. The French émigrés had brought with them, in the perfume of their yellowed lace and in the flash of their last jewels, the precious remains of a frivolity and of a grace which were at the point of death. The spirit of France had been for the lymphatic coldness of the English what condiments are for boiled beef: a stimulant to the appetite. Scandal was on the watch and morals were dissolute. But the wits of these haughty ladies had been sharpened, and all their intrigues were carried on slyly, clandestinely. Against the rigid and narrow Puritanism, against the redoubtable spirit of cant, imagination and fancy struggled without hope of victory. The façade, that was what mattered! So much the worse if the interior of the building were used as a stable. Only, hypocrisy being like the veronal which prolongs the torpor of surfeited and jaded societies, England continued to govern royally. Extravagance and dandyism were required to cheer her up. And how welcome on the occasion of some dreary social function was the arrival of a Hester Stanhope or of a George Brummel!

Lady Hester recalled her entry into the ball-room with Lord Camelford, her beloved cousin—a true Pitt, that man! And what an entry. Both were of extraordinary stature; the women had not enough smiles for him, the men not enough eyes for her. A long flattering murmur accompanied them.

"Have you seen Lord Camelford?" twittered the ladies. "Well, it appears that he blew out the brains of his lieutenant one day that a mutiny threatened to break out aboard his ship, and that quite coolly, just as I am speaking to you."

"Oh! my dear, you make me shiver."

"Yes, my dear, he frequents the taverns in the City, disguised as a sailor, and when he meets some poor devil whose face he recollects, he makes him tell him his history, thrusts a hundred pounds into his hand and threatens to thrash him if he presumes to ask him his name!"

"Have you seen Lady Hester Stanhope? She caused a scandal at the last Court ball. No, really! You have not heard people talking about it? It is shocking, my dear! Would you believe that Lord Abercorn, having vainly solicited from Pitt the Order of the Garter, turned towards Addington (the surgeon's son; yes, exactly) to obtain it? Lady Hester, having learned of the matter, flew into a furious rage. Talking with the Duke of Cumberland—it is from the duke himself that I have the story, she said:

"'After the innumerable favours which Lord Abercorn has received from Mr. Pitt, to go over to Mr. Addington! Ah! I will make him pay dearly for his defection.'

"'Here is your opportunity, then,' exclaimed the duke, 'he has just come in. Go for him, little bulldog!'

"Forthwith Lady Hester pounced upon Addington, and, fixing her eyes on his Garter, said:

"'What have you there, my lord?' (You will recollect that Lord Abercorn has had both his legs broken.) 'What have you there?' A bandage? Mr. Addington has done his work well, and I hope that in future you will be able to walk more easily."

"Oh! it is insufferable!"

"Oh! my dear, here is something much better! The other day, Lord Mulgrave, while breakfasting with Mr. Pitt, found beside his plate a broken spoon.

"'How can Mr. Pitt keep such spoons?' he had the bad taste to say to Lady Hester.

"'Have you not yet discovered,' she replied, 'that Mr. Pitt often uses slight and weak instruments to effect his ends?'"

"What a pest she must be, dear creature! Lord Mulgrave! A wonderful statesman!"

And even those who detested her were the first to bow and scrape and join the crowd of admirers who surged in her wake.

"Lady Hester! I distinguished the pearls of your necklace more than five yards away!" "Lady Hester! you are astonishing this evening!" And suchlike banalities. And what heat! All the rouge and all the powder were melting. Lady Hester endeavoured in vain to reach a balcony. Cries, exclamations, confusion. The Duke of Cumberland's voice rose above the orchestra.

"Where is Lady Hester? where is my little aide-de-camp? Let her come and help me to get out of this inferno; I see nothing of her, and I cannot get out alone. Ah! where has she gone? Where has she gone?"

The Duke of Buckingham hurried away to fetch him a water-ice to save him the trouble of moving.

Who are these crossing the gallery of mirrors? Oh! they could be none but Lady Charlotte Bury and her brother, no one walked as they did; it was enchanting to watch them. What a beautiful woman, truly! What arms! What a hand! One evening when she was entering her box at the Opera, had not the entire house turned to admire her?

The Grassini was beginning to sing in a relative silence. The previous week, the Duchess of Devonshire had had Mrs. Billington, soprano against contralto; the worldly rivalries were continued in music....

In the great drawing-room, skilfully illuminated, for the Duchess of Rutland was too much of a Beaufort by race to leave in the shadow the pretty curve of her profile, the regular beauty of her features, the softness of her long eyelashes, there was a basket of living flowers. The Marchioness of Salisbury, who possessed the piquant charm which belongs to Frenchwomen, and who was slipping on her gloves with supple gestures, quite natural to her, in the prettiest manner imaginable, the Countess of Mansfield, Lady Stafford, the Countess of Glandore, so aristocratic in her demeanour, Lady Sage and Sele, the Countess of Derby, painted by Lawrence when she was still the actress Elisa Farren, and that charming Lady Duncombe, that romantic blonde who had inspired John Hoppner's masterpiece, and the Viscountess Andover, and the Viscountess of St. Asaph and so many others, with their pretty airs or their beautiful faces, their loose tresses, their tall statures, their bosoms rising and falling and their gowns of Indian muslin which revealed the outline of their bodies at the slightest movement—so many others who had posed carelessly, and as if to amuse themselves, before Lawrence, painter of adored women, before Romney or before the miniaturist Cosway.

Earl Grosvenor was talking in the embrasure of a door with the beautiful Lady Stafford. Lord Rivers, the Duke of Dorset, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Mulgrave fluttered about the Duchess of Devonshire. Perhaps they were making her guess at the last riddle of Fox, and the most true of English riddles: "My first denotes affliction which my second is destined to experience; my whole is the best antidote to soothe and cure this grief!" Perhaps also they were murmuring to her the verses which Southey had written in response to her praising William Tell:

Oh! lady nursed in pomp and pleasure
Where learnt thou that heroic measure?

Despite the advancing years, Georgina Spencer had remained "the irresistible Queen of the Mode," the beautiful lady, the exquisite grande dame, artistic, refined, adventurous, who had served as model to the two great English painters of the eighteenth century. With her nose à la Roxelane, her bewitching eyes, her wealth of auburn hair, with that dazzling carnation of the races of the North, that divine mouth which had snatched from Gainsborough a confession of powerlessness: "Your Grace is too difficult for me!" and which had made him throw his brush filled with colours on the damp canvas, she possessed still a unique grace, a reputation for cajolery which exasperated Lady Hester Stanhope. She considered that, when she was not smiling, her expression was satanic, and treated her affability as affectation. She knew so well how to cast her nets over the young men whom she needed for her little receptions! Her sister, Lady Bessborough, was ten times more intelligent. But fame inclines always towards splendid horses, fine carriages, great personages, rumour and sensation.

Lady Liverpool arrived naturally late, for Lord Liverpool was finishing his toilette as he came in. She entered the drawing-room with an inimitable ease of manner, cleaving her way like a beautiful swan through the crowd of guests, smiling to the right, inclining her head to the left, speaking to this one, inquiring after the health of that, saying an amiable word to all. But she was a Hervey, and all the world knew that God had created men, women and Herveys.

The Prince of Wales, who was still, despite his forty years and more, one of the handsomest men in the three kingdoms, with the soul the most ugly and the most vile, had condescended to come and relate to everyone who was willing to listen to him that the King was madder than ever. But Brummel had not yet put in an appearance.

It was whispered that the Prince, to the great despair of the Queen, had had himself painted full length and in uniform by Madam Vigée-Lebrun, while she was staying in London. Well-informed people added that he intended to give this portrait to Mrs. Fitz-Herbert, his former mistress, as a belated testimony of gratitude for all the errors which she had prevented him from committing. "Do not send this letter to such and such a person; she is careless and will leave it about." "You have been drinking all night; hold your tongue!" In this fashion had she been accustomed to address him.

This young widow, very pushful, whose profile and figure recalled those of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, would have been very willing to marry a prince just as Anne Lutterel had married the Duke of Cumberland. But then the Royal Marriage Act, and the religious ceremony of December 21, 1785, had never been recognised.

William Pitt, thin, lank, haughty and awkward-looking, with his head held high and thrown back, was looking fixedly at the ceiling, as though seeking his ideas in the air. One could not depend on that, however, for he took note of everything which happened, and discovered here a shoulder too high, there an imperfect figure under the deceitful drapery, there again a thick ankle.

"Lady Hester, do you not see Lord C ...? He is bowing to you."

"I see down there a great pigeon-chested chameleon. Is that Lord C ...?"

Camelford, who had heard the answer, made vain efforts to preserve his gravity. The unfortunate man had been driven on to the corner of a sofa by a countess, a little passée, who, presently, when he will have fled, tired out, will sing his praises, will shout them rather: "Such delightful manners! Wonderful conversational powers! Charming! Irresistible! Fascinating!"

The heat, continually increasing, was altering, turning pale and distorting the faces of all the company, just as if they were moulded in soft and tepid wax. In proportion as the evening advanced, the favourable impressions which the women had created were discounted. Then Brummel made his appearance. He wore a coat of some softened colour, the material of which had been rasped all over with a piece of sharpened glass, an aerial coat, a coat of lacework.... The gloves he wore were transparent, which moulded his fingers and showed the contour of the nails as well as the flesh—gloves which had necessitated the coalition of four artists, three for the hand, one for the thumb....

And all that without self-consciousness, with a cold languidness, an ease of bearing, a simplicity! But excess of refinement!—does it not often rejoin the natural?

With him there entered an invigorating breath, an unexpected attraction, a new pungency which acted like a tonic upon pleasures which had grown anæmic. The orchestra became more animated, the women more desirable, the men, already three-parts intoxicated by the alcohol they had consumed, less wearisome.

Meanwhile, without hurrying himself, Brummel threaded his way through the rooms. Amongst all those proud ladies, how many had contrived their toilettes, chosen with more care the diamonds which adorned their coiffures and the flowers of their corsages, in the hope of attracting his attention? A duchess told her daughter quite loudly to be careful of her manners, of her gestures and of her answers, if by chance Brummel condescended to speak to her.

And, nevertheless, he was not handsome, in the strict sense of the word. His hair was inclined to be red, and his profile, though of Grecian type, had been spoiled by a fall from his horse, when he was still serving in the 10th Hussars, under the orders of the Prince of Wales. But the expression of his face was more to be admired than his features, the skill of his attitudes more perfect than his body. And, above all, he was irony and impertinence personified. And women, who are sometimes insensible to flattery and endearments, are never so to disdain and wounds inflicted on their vanity. And those who were the most infatuated with "primosity," that exquisite word created by the Pitts to characterise the solemn, stiff, bashful spirit of Cant, and which might have deserved the definition which Pope gave of prudery:

What is prudery? 'Tis a beldam
Seen with wit and beauty seldom

did not pardon him for not having asked them for what they would have refused him. More of a dandy than the Prince of Wales, he had not attached himself to Mrs. Fitz-Herbert, Benina, as he had surnamed her one evening.

His eyes, unreadable and incredibly penetrating, roamed, slowly and without seeing anything, over the rooms in which the most beautiful women in London were gathered. With an icy indifference, his distant glances skimmed the faces, without recognising them, without settling anywhere.

"Where shall I find a woman who knows how to dance without breaking my back?" spoke the magnificent voice at last. "Ah! here is Catherine (the sister of the Duke of Rutland), and I think she will suit my purpose."

But, catching sight of Lady Hester, he gave the duke's sister the slip and came towards her. Raising the ear-rings which concealed the beautiful and graceful collar which encircled her neck, he exclaimed:

"For the love of God, let me see what is under there!"

Pitt's niece and the king of the dandies had a keen appreciation of each other's qualities. They were both of them without rivals in showing the grotesque sides hidden in all men, without rivals in stripping and publicly castigating the puppets who governed England, without rivals in compelling them to unmask themselves their dirty little tricks, their villainous hypocrisies, their bad faith, their monstrous absurdities, just as exhibitors of trained animals make their monkeys parade and dance.

Having passed judgment on the ball—Brummel's praise or blame was everything at that time—or by a silence more eloquent, he went to Watier's Club, followed by Lord Petersham, Lord Somerset, Charles Ker and Robert and Charles Manners, famous Macaronis gravitating around their star.

In the carriage which took them back to Downing Street, Pitt said to his niece:

"Really, Hester, Lord Hertford has paid you so many compliments this evening that you ought to be proud of them."

"Not at all," she answered. "Lord Hertford is deceived if he thinks that I am beautiful. Take each feature of my face separately and put them on the table; not one of them will bear examination. Put them together and illuminated, they are not bad. It is a homogeneous ugliness, nothing more."

A slight roll was disturbing the Jason. Lady Hester, lost in her thoughts, remained leaning against the netting. She recalled to mind some of those mordant sallies which had crucified her victims. Pitt had decided to create an Order of Merit; England was at this time in the thick of the war against France. Lord Liverpool was entrusted with the task of deciding on the colours of the decoration; and one evening he entered the Prime Minister's drawing-room, quite proud of himself and brandishing a tricolour ribbon.

"See," cried he, "how I have succeeded in combining colours which will flatter the natural pride: red is the British flag; blue is the symbol of liberty; white, the symbol of loyalty."

All present expressed their admiration.

"Perfect! Excellent! The King will be pleased!" they exclaimed.

"I am sure of it," remarked Lady Hester, "but it seems to me that I have seen that combination of colours somewhere!"

"Where was it?" inquired Liverpool, taken aback.

"Well, on the cockades of the French soldiers!"

"What ought to be done, Lady Hester? I have ordered five hundred yards of it. What use can I make of it?"

"To keep up your breeches, my lord, when you put papers there which you never find and which you look for at the bottom of one pocket, then at the bottom of another, like an eel at the bottom of a fish-pond. I am always afraid that some misfortune will happen to your breeches!"

And when Addington (the duchess's son still) had had the fancy to have himself created Lord Raleigh, she had conceived a pretty caricature. Her uncle, Pitt, played the part of Queen Elizabeth, dancing a minuet with his nose in the air; Addington, as Sir Walter Raleigh, made his obeisance; and the King wore the costume of a Court jester! Pitt, after indulging in roars of laughter over this description, had despatched a dozen emissaries to all parts of London to secure, no matter at what cost, the famous caricature, which only existed in Lady Hester's imagination. And there was no Lord Raleigh!

And the delicious scenes in which she caused the entire Court to pass in review, those scenes of which she was at once author, actor and costumer. With her the talent of imitation amounted wellnigh to genius. She mimicked the women who were the leaders of the fashionable world, or who had been its leaders, such as the Duchess of Devonshire: "Fu! Fu! Fuh! what shall I do, my dear. Oh, dear! how frightened I am!" She mimicked the duchess's visit to the Foreign Office to demand back a note which she had sent to someone there. Perceiving a shabby little clerk, she said to him:

"Would you be so good, sir, as to have the kindness to give me back that note? I am sure that you are such a perfect gentleman!..."

Then, turning towards the person who had accompanied her, the duchess exclaimed:

"What fine eyes! Don't you think so? He is a handsome man, is he not?" Just as if the staff of the Foreign Office did not understand French!

Lady Hester made game also of the sentimental couples dear to Kotzebue. With her hand on her heart, rolling her blue eyes, she aped the amorous transports of the newly married, representing in a second tableau, not less successful, the mistresses of the one and the lovers of the other.

And the pleasant evenings when she was alone with William Pitt. The logs blazed joyously. The lamps were low. What wonderful hours, for ever fled, she had passed thus during nearly three years!...

She heard William Pitt's clear voice. He was complaining of Canning, so elusive, so unstable, so false. Lady Hester protested mildly.

"Perhaps he is thus merely in appearance, uncle," said she, "and only sacrifices his opinions ostensibly in order to strengthen your reputation."

"I have lived for twenty-five years, my child, in the midst of men of every kind, and I have found only one human being capable of such a sacrifice."

"Who can that be? Is it the Duke of Richmond? Is it such or such a person?"

"No, it is you!" ...

Hester plunged further into her reveries. Dear Uncle William! How he loved her! It seemed but yesterday evening that he said to her: "Little one, I have many good diplomatists who understand nothing of military operations, and I have many good officers who understand not a jot about diplomatic negotiations. If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with sixty thousand men and I would give you carte blanche. And I am sure that all my plans would be executed and that all the soldiers would have their shoes blacked."

Lady Hester recalled the promenades on the old feudal terrace of Windsor Castle. The King was there. All the princes and princesses revolved about him. All at once, the King stopped and, addressing himself to Pitt, said:

"Pitt, I have found a Minister to replace you."

Mr. Pitt immediately replied:

"I am happy that Your Majesty has found someone to relieve me of the burden of affairs; a little rest and fresh air will do me good."

The King continued as if he were concluding his sentence and had heard nothing:

"A Minister better than you."

"Your Majesty's choice cannot be other than excellent," replied Pitt, surprised.

The King resumed:

"I say, then, Pitt, that I have found a better Minister and, further, a very good general."

Those present began to smile and to scoff stealthily at the King's favourite. Pitt, notwithstanding his experience of the Court, felt ill at ease.

"Sir, will you condescend to tell me," said he, "who is this remarkable person to whom I render the homage due to his great talent and the choice of Your Majesty?"

The King would show him who it was: Lady Hester on her uncle's arm!

"Here is my new Minister," he exclaimed. "There is no person in the kingdom who is a better statesman than Lady Hester, and, I have great pleasure also in declaring, there is no woman who does more honour to her sex. You have no reason to be proud of yourself, Mr. Pitt, for there have been many Ministers before you and there will be many after you. But you have reason to be proud of her, for she unites all that is great in man and in woman."

Still standing on the bridge of the ship, insensible to the wind and the cold, Lady Hester recalled the painful circumstances which had accompanied the death of William Pitt. How he had lain emaciated and enfeebled in his room at Putney Hall, but always so full of hope, so confident in the approaching cure. And in less than a week afterwards he was resting on his death-bed. They enter, the latch is pushed, the door is open; the familiar footsteps no longer echo on the flagstones of the deserted corridors; the house is empty, the friends have fled, the servants are far away, the crowd of courtiers who used to besiege the porter's lodge dispersed, vanished, disappeared! It seemed to Lady Hester that she was again alone with her uncle for the last time. Then she had experienced the desertion of those who, only the day before, had been the most faithful. For twenty years he had spent himself body and soul for the good of the country; he had worn out his health; neglected his fortune, employed his credit on behalf of others; and he had received, as a last recompense, the approving sneers of those who listened to Canning criticising and disparaging his policy and exclaiming: "That is Pitt's glorious system!" And all the newspapers reflected: "That is Pitt's glorious system!" Hounds rushing on the quarry fearing lest they should lose a bite.

Rise at an early hour, receive fifty persons, eat in haste or do not eat at all, hurry to Windsor Castle, hurry to the House, tire our your lungs until three in the morning. Scarcely have you returned home than Mr. Adams arrives with a paper, then Mr. Long with another. Go to bed then—rat-tat-tat, a despatch from Lord Melville, "On His Majesty's service." Sleep—rat-tat-tat, thirty persons are waiting at the door.

Lady Hester recalled the little house in Montague Square, where she had gone to hide her grief. To have been everything and to have been only that! To make and unmake Ministers, to distribute pensions, to mimic the courtiers, to be insolent towards some, ironical towards others, to move surrounded by a troupe of envious persons wreathed in smiles, of ambitious persons bowing and scraping unceasingly, of fools gaping with admiration, to humble the vainglorious, to unmask the hypocrites. To be more than Minister.

She had known the pleasure of exercising authority without control, of commanding with the certainty of being obeyed; she had had the halo of fame without having its reverses, and then on a sudden she was no longer anything. Nothingness. Had she need of a shilling? Every purse was closed. Naturally, no more horses or carriages. Were she to ride in a hackney-coach. There was always some charitable soul to say: "Whom do you think I have met in a hackney-coach this afternoon?" ... Did she go on foot.... There were always well-intentioned persons to insinuate that Lady Hester Stanhope did not walk alone for nothing....

Did she meet a friend and walk a few steps with him, immediately all the neighbourhood was twittering:

"Have you seen Lady Hester Stanhope crossing Hanover Square with such and such a person? I wonder where they went." ... Confined in the pillory, she was obliged, without hope of revenge, to endure the insults of those at whom she had imprudently scoffed when intoxicated with power. And they were so much the more to be feared since they were enticed by the certainty of impunity. Men, like animals, soon become vicious when they know they are the stronger. She fled from London, and her little cottage at Builth, in Wales, was invaded in its turn by all that clique of people who make it their business to gloat over the misfortunes of others.

Charles, her favourite brother, and General Sir John Moore, the only man, except Camelford, who had ever touched her heart, were both dead. In the garden of her hopes there was nothing but tombs. What was there to stand in the way of her leaving England?

Long before the man in the crow's-nest had shouted: "Land to starboard!" Lady Hester's piercing eyes had made out a rocky point. It was Cap Finistère—France!

France! Her uncle Pitt had been there once, once only, between two Parliamentary sessions. It was in the autumn of 1783. After a stay at Rheims, at the time of the vintage, he had spent some days in Paris. The King was at Fontainebleau and all the fashionable world far from the capital, "with the exception of the English, who had the air of being in possession of the town." He visited the monuments, attended the Comédie-Française, followed a stag-hunt, appeared full of gaiety and animation, although he became a little bored when people talked to him of Parliamentary reform, and attracted the notice of all the distinguished people, beginning with Queen Marie Antoinette.

But that M. and Madame Necker should have offered him their daughter, with an income of £14,000, was laughable. How, imbued with the Swiss ideas on domestic happiness, could they have dared to throw their daughter Germaine at the head of a foreigner whom they had known scarcely a few days? In any case, Pitt's theatrical reply: "I have already wedded my country," is nonsense. He was much more direct and, above all, much more sarcastic, the dear uncle!

The night fell; a mauve twilight blended with the coasts of France. Lady Hester bent her head. She saw again a little girl seven or eight years old who, furtively, throwing anxious glances to either side, unfastened a boat made fast to the beach at Hastings, raised the mooring-ring, grasped the oar with a sure hand and made for the open sea. This little girl, whose head had been turned by the visit which the Comte d'Adhémar, the French Ambassador, had paid Lord Stanhope, captivated by the plumed hats of the well-fed lackeys, flattered by the courteous manners and sweeping bows of the Count, had decided to go to France, to see what was happening there.

She had been overtaken far from the land. How well Hester recognised that little adventurous girl!...

But the first stars were shining in the clear sky, and this tall woman in mourning, who had remained motionless for hours, watching without seeing them the varying sports of the grey waves, rose at last and left the bridge while the Jason bore her to the conquest of the Orient.

CHAPTER II
MEDITERRANEAN YACHTING

ON a beautiful spring morning a frigate cast anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar. Lady Hester disembarked with a young lady companion, Miss Williams, who had been a long time in the service of the family, an English lady's-maid, Anne Fry, a German cook and innumerable trunks. Everyone was lodged, including the brother, at the Convent, the residence of the Governor, Lieutenant-General Campbell. Mr. Sutton and the doctor were obliged to find lodgings elsewhere.

Spain was then almost entirely in the hands of the French, and it was by no means prudent to go far from the fort. Rides on horseback could not be indulged in except on the narrow isthmus which connected the fort with the shore, sandy ground, which was, besides, excellent for a gallop. The travellers also visited the fortifications. The most content in the matter was Dr. Meryon. Consider, then, the weather was fine, the weather was warm, the trees were green and the flowers in bud, and one was able to bathe every day in the tepid sea, which, for an Englishman, is important. And it was only by the merest chance that he had not remained in England! In truth—if the weather had not been icy-cold; if he had not missed the coach; if he had not run along the Oxford road to overtake it; if he had not mounted the coach heated from his exertions; if he had not caught cold; if he had not returned to London; if Cline, the surgeon's son, had not come to see him; if he had not spoken to him of the proposal of Lady Hester Stanhope, who was in search of a doctor, he would be at that moment in the damp meadows of Oxford, coughing and growing musty! You see how destiny is sometimes affected by a few glasses of ale! And the doctor, who was a philosopher, took bathe upon bathe with delight. There were some slight inconveniences in living on this isolated rock: the meat was tough and bony, and vegetables were lacking. On the other hand, there was plenty of wine, but it was bad, which did not prevent the servants from being always drunk.

Lady Hester did she regard this halt as a pilgrimage? In Spanish soil slept her brother, Major Charles Stanhope, and her friend, General Sir John Moore, killed scarcely a year earlier, in that terrible battle of Coruña. General Moore was one of those fine types of officer which fascinate energetic and enterprising women, combining in some fashion their dream of heroism and virility. Very handsome in his person, tall and admirably made, the features of the face attaining a perfection which had nothing of insipidity about them, he had fulfilled the promises which he gave at the age of thirteen, when his father wrote:

"He is truly a handsome boy; he dances, rides on horseback, fences with extraordinary skill. He draws capably, speaks and writes French very well and has serious notions of geography, arithmetic and geometry.... He is continually showing me how Geneva can be taken."

The Moores were then at Geneva, which the young man was soon to leave to travel in France, Germany and Italy. He continued to perfect his education; the first part permitted him to render himself agreeable to women, the second aided him in his career as an officer, at any rate it is to be hoped that it did. The knowledge of French was useful to both. The profession of arms was at that time a very attractive one, for England was in the midst of the American War, while the more serious wars of the Revolution and Empire were to follow. There was promotion to be won and no time to stagnate in garrison towns. Young Ensign Moore took part in all the fêtes and journeyed across the world. For an intelligent lad to see the country is never a disagreeable thing. We find him at Minorca in 1776, then in America in 1779. He takes part in the famous Corsican expedition by the side of Paoli. He is sent to San Lucia, commands a brigade at the Helder under the orders of Abercromby, returns to Minorca, goes to Malta, takes part in the Egyptian campaign, is very nearly going to the Indies and in 1808 is finally appointed commander-in-chief of the troops in Spain. Accidents by the way were not lacking. He was wounded so often that his friends surnamed him the "unlucky one."

In his last campaign it seems that ill-luck, indeed, pursued him. Moore relied confidently on the resistance of the Spaniards in Madrid and was in entire ignorance of the negotiations of Prince Castelfranco and Don Thomas Morla to surrender the town. The admirable English army, 29,000 strong, was concentrated at Toro and the infantry was within two hours' march of the French, when a letter, intercepted by chance, suddenly informed him that Napoleon had made his entry into Madrid no less than three weeks earlier. Then began that magnificent retreat, in the depth of winter, over 250 miles of difficult and hilly country. Hard pressed by the enemy, the exhausted English army reached Coruña on January 16. The embarkation was hurried on, but the enemy was already descending from the heights in serried columns. Lord Bentinck's brigade sustained the shock. Moore was justly applauding an heroic charge of the 50th, under the orders of Majors Napier and Stanhope, when a bullet struck him and shattered his shoulder. He lived until the evening. His soldiers buried him as dawn was breaking, on a gloomy January day, and while they were digging the grave with their bayonets the enemy's cannon began to growl again, as if to render funeral honours to the dead.

Moore was certainly not an ordinary officer. "His abilities and his coolness," said Napoleon of him, "alone saved the English army of Spain from destruction. He was a brave soldier, an excellent officer and a man of valour. He committed some faults which were no doubt inseparable from the difficulties in the midst of which he was struggling and occasioned perhaps by the mistakes of his intelligence service." In the mouth of Napoleon, rather sparing of praise, is not this the finest military eulogium?

What Lady Hester did not perhaps know is that her hero, during a mission in Sicily, had nearly married Miss Caroline Fox, the daughter of General Henry Edward Fox. He had been prevented by a chivalrous sentiment in thinking of the difference of age which existed between the young girl and himself. And also, to be candid, by the fear of being indebted to his high position for a heart which he aspired to owe only to himself. Singular scruple when we reflect that the general was then forty-five years old!

Would Lady Hester have continued to wear the miniature of the brilliant officer and to drag it with her in her peregrinations across the Orient, if she had been acquainted with this trifling detail? It is probable that she did not lack kind lady friends too happy to furnish her with abundant information on this subject. But General Moore was dead, and survivors have a tendency to idealise those who are no longer there to contradict them....

Soon Captain Stanhope received orders to rejoin his regiment. Mr. Sutton left for Minorca, whither his affairs called him. Lady Hester, tired of garrison life, took advantage of the offer which was made her by Captain Whitby, commander of the Cerberus, to convey her to Malta. Her departure took place on April 7.

A fortnight later Lady Hester disembarked at Valetta. She was expected at Malta, and several notabilities solicited the honour of entertaining her. She chose the house of Mr. Fernandez, the commissary-general. The town presented an agreeable prospect with its wide streets intersecting one another at right angles and the low houses with their flat roofs.

The doctor found life good; well lodged, well fed, he appreciated the daily fare. Meals allowed three complete services and five to ten different wines, and were followed by coffee and liqueurs, as in France.

He wandered, amused, across Valetta, followed by a troupe of naked and dusty children, jostled by the Maltese, whose woolly hair, olive skin and flat noses caused him to dream already of barbarian countries, passing the women with their shawls of black silk placed on the head, descending in graceful folds, which enveloped the body and half-veiled the face. Little, at least they appeared so to him, for daily life with Lady Hester was obliged to distort a little the accurate computation of figures, their feet and hands admirable, he compared them in petto, in taking away their necklaces, bracelets and chains with which they were overloaded, to little English serving-maids, without any offensive intention on his part, but because he could not find, in his national pride, a better comparison to express the admiration with which their plump arms and their full figures inspired him.

He walked also in the magnificent Cathedral of San Giovanni, whose pavement in mosaics of glistening colours gave him the illusion of walking on the pictures from the gallery of the Louvre taken from their frames and sewn together. And then what fêtes! So long as Lord Bute was Governor of the island the doctor had to stand aside. Constantly Lady Hester said to him: "Doctor, I am dining this evening with Lord Bute; you are not invited, but do not regret that, for he is a haughty man who does not like doctors and tutors to open their mouths before he addresses them. Also take advantage of my absence to invite whomever you like to dine with you; I have given orders to Franz (the German cook)."

At the end of May, this Governor who had such bad taste was recalled, and General Oakes, who succeeded him, was a very worthy gentleman. Never will the doctor see again such brilliant receptions.... Malta was then the fashion; the Neapolitan nobility, which had refused to recognise the usurper Murat, had flowed back there en masse, and the English, always travelling, and to whom the Continental blockade, in closing Europe to them, had given a revival of restlessness, had no choice and preferred still the mild climate of Valetta to the London fog so much vaunted.

There were every day dinners of sixty covers at the Governor's palace. The thousands of candles which the silver cressets and the chased candelabra supported did not succeed in lighting the monumental staircase; they illuminated the line of salons, plunged into the depths of the hall, lingered over the faded brocades and the old tapestries, glided over the waves of the mural frescoes representing a naval combat between the Christian Knights and the Moors, caressed the dark tresses of the beautiful Neapolitan ladies, flashed on the laced uniforms of the English officers of the garrison, played on the gala costumes, magnificent and strange, of the Greek and Levantine Navy, to glitter finally on the blonde hair of Lady Hester Stanhope, whose haughty head dominated this picturesque medley of races. At the supper which followed the ball, a table was arranged on a dais, which reminded the doctor of Oxford University.... But what a difference! One evening did he not accompany a lady of high and authentic rank, and, sitting by her, did he not find himself separated from the Governor, who was flanked on the right by the Duchesse of Pienna and on the left by Lady Hester, by the width of the table, not by the length—the width you must clearly understand? And with a score of lords, dukes, marquises and counts all around!

The summer came. Lady Hester accepted the kind offer of General Oakes, who placed at her disposal the Palazzo San Antonio, a few miles from Valetta. The palace was a large building, flanked by a tower simulating a belfry. The interior was spacious and well ventilated, but the total absence of rugs and carpets, in order to keep it cool, gave the doctor the impression of being always on the floor of the kitchen.

What was wonderful there were the gardens. The place recalled that of the Orangery at Versailles, but never will the most assiduous care be able, in the French climate, to obtain orange-trees, lemon-trees and pomegranate-trees so vigorous and so beautiful. What magnificent shooting of the sap towards the sun, expanding in domes of glistening leaves, in flowers of purple, in fruits of gold! Double oleanders, of the shape of hazel-trees, diffused their bitter and sharp odour. Hedges of myrtle ten feet high separated thickets of giant roses and bound a terrace, forming a colonnade where the vine suspended itself in arches and mingled its ripe grapes with the green branches.

Many foreigners and English people touched at Malta; amongst them Mr. Michael Bruce, the bold Colonel Bruce who, with the assistance of Sir Robert Wilson and Mr. Hutchinson, had succeeded in contriving the escape of Lavalette, on the eve of his execution, and in enabling him to cross the frontier. Learning that Lady Stanhope's brother had been recalled by his military duties, he resolved to take his place near her and to accompany her throughout the perilous journey which she had resolved to undertake across European and Asiatic Turkey. Sweet solicitude!

Soon the heat became infernal. They were in the month of August, and the thermometer registered 85 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. Lady Hester, who had lost appetite and suffered from acute indigestion, decided to go to Constantinople, the only corner of Europe accessible to the English. Sicily, which had for a moment attracted her, was threatened by an invasion of Murat.

Not being able to obtain a King's ship, an American brig, the Belle-Poule, was hired to cross the Ionian Sea. Miss Williams remained at Malta with her sister, who was married to a commissariat officer.

The travellers touched at the Isle of Zante, the flower of the Levant, the golden isle, which the English had conquered the previous year at the same time as Ithaca, Cerigo and Cephalonia. What an enchanting vision greeted them on entering the harbour! On the right, at the foot of a wooded mountain, lay the white houses of a delicious little town hidden in the olive woods of a light and vaporish grey; and tall and sombre cypress-trees climbed across the fields of wild vine to the assault of the citadel which dominated and completed this dream landscape. It was the time of the raisin harvest, and women with faces much painted, a layer of white about their lips, were drying the grapes in the warm sun of the Orient which blackens the skins, swollen with juice, in a few days.

One ought not to remain too long in too beautiful countries. Their complete perfection produces insensibly an ennui which paralyses and a depression of the mind which leads too quickly to yawning admiration, then to torpor. It is perhaps for that reason that the great artists, the great workers, those who produce and struggle, avoid the enchanted lands of the South, where beauty is an easy conquest within the reach of all. Lady Hester, who cared only for action, stayed a fortnight at Zante; and on August 23 a felucca brought her to Patras. There she was rejoined by the Marquis of Sligo, whose yacht was wandering across the Mediterranean. The marquis joined himself as well to the expedition. Yet a new bodyguard!

At Corinth, Lady Stanhope received a visit from the Bey's harem. The interpreter begged the men to retire, but Lord Sligo, Bruce and the doctor thought that now or never was their opportunity to admire the Turkish beauties to the life. A bey, whose will was law throughout the province, ought not to choose ugly women to beguile his hours of leisure. They concealed themselves, therefore, behind a wainscot whose kind crevices permitted them to see without being seen.

The women, placed at their ease by Lady Hester's kind reception, began soon to unveil and to throw off their ferigees. Some were pretty and stretched themselves on the sofa in studied attitudes. They communicated with Lady Hester by signs and gestures. Intrigued by her strange garments, they began to discuss in detail the different parts of her costume and to compare them with their own, curious to understand European lingerie. Unaware that they were spied upon by the men's eyes, they uncovered their feet bare to the heel, reddened by henna, and their white bosoms which the Turkish robes, loose at the neck and shoulder, allowed one to see. They quickly became familiar, their gestures, in default of words, were more expressive. Lady Stanhope was very embarrassed at the disagreeable situation in which the curiosity of her friends had placed her. To extricate her in time from this difficulty and judging that they had seen enough, they gave vent to stifled laughter. Instantly, as though struck by an electric shock, the young women resumed their veils over their ferigees, their gaiety fled away and they imperiously demanded, by signs, the explanation of these mysterious sounds. This time it was the position of Sligo, Bruce and Meryon which was critical; if the bey came to learn of the adventure, his vengeance would not tarry. Lady Hester, with great sang-froid, reassured the women and succeeded in pacifying them; but, soon afterwards, they rose to depart, thinking, without any doubt, that it was better to be silent and not to draw upon themselves the suspicion of their lord and master, jealous like every self-respecting Turk.

Having passed the Isthmus of Corinth on horseback, Lady Hester and her suite, which amounted to twenty-five persons—Lord Sligo having for his share: a Tartar, two Albanians, with their yataghans by their sides, a dragoman, a Turkish cook, an artist to sketch picturesque scenery and costumes (the photographer of the time), and three English servants in livery and one without livery!—embarked at Kenkri for Athens.

The French consul at Janina, François Pouqueville, was looking forward to Lady Hester's visit.

"Greece is therefore now the country whither the English flock to cure the spleen," he writes on October 8, 1810. "One sees only mylords, princes, but what one would never have expected there is the 'mi-carême,' yes, the 'mi-carême.' She is a great lady of forty years and more, relative or aunt of Mr. Pitt, attacked by the twofold malady of antiquity and celebrity, who has appeared on the horizon. The said lady, guarded by a doctor and two lackeys, has debouched in the Morea. We are assured that she intends to make the pilgrimage to Thyrinth, where was that fountain into which Juno, the 'mi-carême' of Olympus, used to descend every year to bathe and from which she used to emerge a maiden. From the lustral waters, our traveller will visit Thermopylæ, will make a survey of Pharsalia, where her great-grandfather beat Pompey, and will come like 'my aunt Aurore' to sentimentalise under the arbours of Tempea. I await her on the shores of Acherusia.[1] We shall see this Fate."

The gallant consul lost his time and money the "mi-carême" did not come to Janina.

On their arrival at the Piræus, the travellers saw a man who was flinging himself from the great mole into the sea. The exploits of Byron repeating Leander's achievement and crossing the Hellespont by swimming, had already come to their ears. Lord Sligo felt sure that he recognised him in this bold diver and hailed him. Byron, for it was indeed he, dressed in haste and soon came to join them. He even lent his horses to go to Athens to find means of transport in order to fetch Lady Hester and his numerous trunks.

Having nothing to do, Bruce and the doctor tried to enter into relations with a band of young veiled Turkish girls seated on the beach. The latter, scared, took to flight, and Bruce, who had not learned enough from his recent experience, made many signs to them to induce them to remain. Some Turks who were lounging about the jetty muttered threats against this enterprising Frank. He narrowly escaped getting into mischief.

At Athens, Lady Hester, who was an excellent organiser of comfort, transformed in a few hours her temporary house into a pleasant home, where every evening an agreeable little company assembled.

Byron, who had been at college with Sligo and Bruce, was amongst the number; but finding the manners of the hostess too despotic, he soon grew tired. He pleaded urgent business in the Morea and did not reappear until a few days before his departure. It is always disagreeable for those who have fled from their country to meet their compatriots again. It diminishes the consideration of the inhabitants, above all when these new-comers possess illustrious rank, originality and eccentricity. Lady Hester and Byron could compete on these three points, and this accidental occurrence of what an Englishman hates the most in the world, to be acquainted with another travelling Englishman, was not calculated to establish a sympathetic intercourse.

On Byron's side, the affair was complicated by wounded masculine vanity. Anxious to excess concerning its beauty and its harmony, he suffered enormously from his constant lameness. And now chance was giving him as a rival a woman redoubtable, astonishingly attractive, notwithstanding that she had a figure like a grenadier, and possessing two feet superbly arched and of equal size, which did not allow themselves to be easily forgotten! Men have never cared to meet superior women, even in the size of their shoes.

Lady Hester, who prided herself upon being a physiognomist, considered his eyes defective; the only thing that pleased her was the ringlet on his forehead. For Byron, accustomed to other conquests, this was indeed little. As for the poet, "it is easy enough to write verses," confided he to the doctor, "and as to the matter of ideas, God knows where you find them! You pick up some old books which no one knows and borrow what is inside." The man of the world and the man of letters having been united in a general reprobation, Byron made the best of the situation: that is to say, by separating without delay from this Britannic Juno.

The doctor less stern, saw Byron more often. He remarked his singular manner of entering a drawing-room, making skilful détours from chair to chair, so far as that which he had chosen, anxious to conceal his lameness, which this manœuvre, after all, made the more apparent. Byron exploited this admiration in persuading the doctor to attend a young Greek girl in whom he was greatly interested.

[1]Ancient name of the Lake of Janina.

CHAPTER III
ORIENTAL INITIATION

ON October 16, 1810, Lady Hester Stanhope and her companions left Athens on board of a Greek polacca. But, having been enlightened in regard to the skill of the mariners who, in time of storm, fold their arms, invoking St. George and leaving Heaven to take charge of the working of the ship, they disembarked in all haste at Erakli—the ancient Heraclea—and Lord Sligo and Bruce proceeded to Constantinople to seek aid. They returned with a Turkish officer provided with a firman. Barques awaited, of that type in which the prow is shallow and the poop pointed, with those fine bronze-chested sailors, with flowing breeches and scarlet tarboosh, whose deep voices add to the melancholy of the passage the charm of unknown tongues.

On one of those November evenings which tinge the sky with delicate and glowing roses, just when the countless minarets of the mosques of Constantinople were fading into the night come unexpectedly, the barques stopped at Topkhana. A sedan-chair for Lady Hester, and for the others the walk through the steep and mountainous streets. The lugubrious barking of the famished dogs wandering, in bands, in the deserted quarters, the capricious flame of the lantern which precedes the caravan, sometimes lighting up old leprous houses, at others throwing into the shadow gardens of which hardly a glimpse could be had—it was Pera.

What long strolls in the narrow streets in which the absence of carriages made the voices sound strangely! Passing between the double hedge of merchants who seemed to watch purchasers from the depths of their shops like spiders crouching in their webs, Lady Hester and her friends had the impression of moving about under the jeering eyes of a row of servants.

One Friday, an Amazon calmly traversed the streets of Constantinople. She was Lady Hester, who was on her way to attend the procession of the Sultan Mahmoud so far as the mosque, and had found this convenient means to avoid being annoyed by the populace, dirty and dusty, as could possibly be desired. It was the first time that a woman, a European, with face uncovered, promenaded thus equipped. It was necessary to be of the stamp of Lady Hester, to have her contempt of opinion, her disdain of social conventions, her insensate desire to get herself talked about, her love of sensation, to attempt so bold an enterprise. It was necessary to possess her tall figure, her impressive countenance, her manly appearance, to succeed and pass without insults. The spectacle, besides, was worth this risk.

Janissaries, in brand-new uniforms, keep in check the crowd while the police distribute the blows of "Korbach." First came some dozens of water-carriers, spilling in the dust the sacred liquid, without any stint. Then a confused and important mass of servants, equerries, executioners. Then, surrounded by footmen, mounted on a horse magnificently caparisoned, a man with a proud and distant air, wearing a dark beard. "Here is the Sultan!" exclaimed the doctor and his friends. But it was only the officer who bore the Sultan's footstool.... The mistakes are repeated for the sword-bearer and the pipe-bearer. "This time, it is he!" Not yet. And the Captain Pacha, the Reis Effendi, the Kakliya Bey, the Grand Vizier, enveloped in their priceless pelisses, the hilts of their khandjars blazing with diamonds and throwing sparks, pass nonchalantly on their chargers, which are half-crushed beneath the weight of the harness, casting on the people bored glances.

On a sudden, there came the most profound silence, a silence mournful, heavy, uneasy, and a singular murmur, monotonous and plaintive, like the voice of the swell beating against the cliffs, rose from the prostrate crowd—all these men, bringing the folds of their robes over their chests with a concerted gesture, called down the blessings of Mahomet on the Commander of the Faithful. And Mahmoud passed.... His escort, dressed in garments of brocade plaited with golden and silver threads and wearing plumed helmets, surrounded him with a rampart of fluttering and nodding plumes and hid his person from the generality of mortals. His stallion, of a snowy whiteness, disappeared beneath the saddle-cloths and gala trappings which were studded with mother-of-pearl and pearls and multi-coloured gems. The crowd rose again; Kislar Aga, the Minister of Pleasures—happy Minister!—a hideous negro with a bestial countenance, followed, surrounded by a hundred eunuchs, both black and white. A bunch of eunuchs! Finally, a dwarf preceded three hundred pages of haughty bearing, clad, in white satin.

After spending a few days at Constantinople, Lady Stanhope abandoned her house at Pera, which was too small, for a villa at Therapia. The waves of the Bosphorus came to beat against the walls, and afar off the transparent wintry light bathed the Asiatic coast and the shores of the Black Sea. The visitors were numerous: Stratford Canning, English Ambassador at the Sublime Porte; Mr. Henry Pearce, a friend of Bruce; Mr. Taylor, who arrived from Egypt and Syria; Lord Plymouth and many others. Constantinople was very gay; receptions and balls followed one another, and only the dragomans, in their parti-coloured costumes, gave to them an Oriental tinge. For the Turks rarely mix with Europeans, fearing the length of their meals and the use of wine.

The doctor, upon whom his profession conferred special privileges, received invitations from the Captain Pacha's medical attendant. Meals which might nourish the vanity, if not the stomach. The fare was not bad, but scarcely was a dish placed upon the table than diligent servants pounced upon it and carried it away. And then the clear water, however pure and fresh it might be, was not a beverage which was long endurable.

Lady Hester was soon on a footing of intimacy with several distinguished Turks. "One ought to see them," she wrote, "seated under the trees of a public promenade, not distinguishing the Greek, Armenian or European women, but looking at them en bloc like sheep in a meadow." She invited the Captain Pacha's brother to dinner, and, very quickly familiarised with the use of knives, forks and chairs, he spent more than half an hour at table—which is a great concession for a Turk—ate of everything, including the good substantial English roast joints and the heavy greasy puddings, enjoyed three or four glasses of wine and appeared enchanted with all that his hostess offered him. It was true that the hostess was not an ordinary one.

To charm her hours of leisure which all these occupations did not contrive to fill, she went to visit the ships of the Turkish fleet, in the dress of an officer. She wanted to see everything, examined everything in detail, ferreted everywhere and returned delighted with her expedition. To one of her friends, who, shocked at her masculine garments, took the liberty of reproaching her on the subject, she retorted with her customary impetuosity: "Breeches, a military cloak and a hat with a plume are no doubt a more indecent costume than that of your fine madams half-naked in their ball dresses."

From February the weather abruptly changed. Never was English spring more severe. There was a foot of snow, and Lady Hester suffered cruelly from the cold, for the brasiers which they carried about from one room to another did not give even the illusion of warmth. She had a wild desire to leave for Italy or for France, desire so much the more ardent that the English were forbidden to enter these countries. She left no stone unturned to approach M. de Latour-Maubourg, the French Ambassador at Constantinople. It was a difficult task, for relations between French and English were so strained that it was forbidden, even to private individuals of the two nations, to have any intercourse with each other. Lady Hester was like one of those thoroughbreds of which William Pitt spoke. You are able to guide them with a hair and their pace is regular and easy, but if you thwart them, they rear and become furious. The obstacles excited instead of stopping her. She swore that she would see M. de Latour-Maubourg, and she kept her word. She took long walks through the Turkish country and rambled in the inextricable alleys of Pera to throw off the scent of the spies whom Canning, become suspicious, had launched in pursuit of her, poor devils who had never been accustomed to such rough work. One day, when she was going to join the French Ambassador on the shores of the Bosphorus, she was followed ... On the morrow, Canning asked her:

"Lady Hester, where did you spend the day yesterday?"

She took the offensive:

"Has not your spy informed you?"

Canning began to laugh and lectured her:

"If you continue, I shall be obliged to write to England."

But Lady Hester did not allow herself to be intimidated easily.

"Ah well," replied she, "I shall also write a letter in my style: 'Dear Sir,—Your young and excellent Minister, in order to prove his worth, has begun his diplomatic career by causing ladies to be followed to their rendezvous, and so forth.'"

During this time, Latour-Maubourg was working actively to obtain the authorisation desired and sent letter upon letter to Paris. Meanwhile, Lady Hester, Bruce and the doctor set out for the sulphur baths of Broussa; Broussa the green, Broussa the divine, with its white houses lost in the forests of pointed minarets, of tall cypress-trees and broad plane-trees; Broussa which sleeps at the foot of Olympus in an ocean of orchards eternally in flower and in fruit, to the thirst-quenching sounds of the countless cascades descending from the mountains.

Some months later, they returned to Constantinople, or rather to Bebec, the lease of the villa at Therapia having expired. All the wealthy Turks had their summer residences on the shores of the Bosphorus, and hours passed, carelessly and quickly, in watching row past the richly decorated barges, with their flashing draperies, which conveyed from door to door the beautiful visitors. But to obtain provisions was a difficult matter; the doctor suffered from the heat and regretted the good dinners in the English fashion. Here there was nothing but mutton, nothing but mutton, and if it had only been eatable! There was certainly some fish to be had which could be fried, but the fishermen were so powerful!...

Lady Hester not caring to spend another winter at Constantinople and not receiving any reply from France, decided to sail for Egypt. The climate attracted her, and perhaps also the recollection of Moore, which urged her to go towards the places through which he had passed. Then began for the doctor a punishment of another kind. He had certainly succeeded as a doctor at Constantinople. A marvellous cure, vanity quite apart, performed on the Danish Minister, had made him the fashion. One morning he had awakened to find himself famous. The Captain Pacha made him attend his wife, who, after all, died. He had illustrious patients, even the Princess Morousi, wife of the former Hospodar of Wallachia! He became the habitué of the harems and began, as so many others had, to taste the charm of the women of the Orient. He admired everything in them; their skin fragrant and soft, their long hair to which the henna imparted reddish reflections, their slight (?) embonpoint which rendered their contours softer and accentuated the languidness of their movements. He began a crusade against the use of European corsets, since his deities did not wear them. And arrived at the highest point of poetic enthusiasm, he cried:

"The ottoman is their throne and the flower which bends its head their model!"

Decidedly, he was in the mood to lose the notion of the straight line! And now all of a sudden, because this tall woman, who assuredly had not soft movements, had decided upon it, he was obliged to depart!

His beautiful patients brought him on his departure their fees concealed in the embroideries which their white hands had themselves executed. And if, in the course of his voyage, the doctor chanted the praises of the Turks, nay, even of the Armenians, and was very cold in referring to the Greeks, do not seek for political reasons. It is quite simply that the first were much more generous!

Lord Sligo, the best-hearted of men, the warmest of friends, had returned to Malta in the course of the winter. But Lady Hester found another escort in the person of Mr. Pearce, who solicited the honour of joining the expedition.

On October 23, 1811, accompanied by seven Greek servants, amongst whom was a young man, Giorgio Dallegio, of dark complexion, active, alert, speaking three or four languages, and who was not slow in attracting Lady Hester's attention, the travellers embarked for Alexandria, on board of a Greek vessel, with a Greek crew, alas! Rut they had no choice. Contrary winds retained them near Rhodes until November 23. Four days later, a nice little storm of the first class came on. As though this was not enough work, they sprung a leak, and at night the master began to shout: "All hands to the pumps." All hands to the pumps is very quickly said, but Levantine vessels rarely possess pumps, and when they have them they are worthless, which, by chance, was the case now. Bruce, Pearce, the doctor and the seven servants set to work and emptied in regular order the buckets into the sea. Lady Hester, to whom a little air of danger was attractive, encouraged them by voice and gesture and distributed wine, which was of more value. Day broke; the sea was of a leaden hue, the sky of a dirty grey. The Greeks threw themselves into the bottom of the boat, calling upon all the saints of Christianity: "Panagia mou! Panagia mou!" but taking good care not to put into action the useful proverb: "Aid thyself, Heaven will aid thee!" The south-western point of Rhodes appeared; the vessel no longer answered to her helm; through the rent which had grown wider the water was entering with a sinister gurgle, weighing down the ship which, like a great gull wounded unto death, was leaning in an alarming manner and was lying on its side. The masts cracked. Then the master—who was no use except to shout—roared in a voice of thunder:

"Launch the cutter."

Rush of twenty-five persons. The doctor had still the presence of mind to run and fetch his fees hidden in the cabin. The wind tossed the little vessel about like the parings of an onion; waves covered her incessantly, and the doctor found that there were a great many "tubs" for one man.

The last hope of the shipwrecked was a rock half a mile away. By dint of efforts and of savage struggles for life, they reached the reef. It was not, however, the refuge they had longed for. The seas swept the greater part of it; a narrow excavation was the only sheltered spot. Lady Hester and her maid established themselves there as their right. Night came. No water, except the waterspouts which the sky cast down without counting, no provisions! At midnight, the wind having fallen a little, the master suggested that he should go with the crew to fetch help from Rhodes, adding that, if everyone wanted to come, he would answer for nothing. Willingly or unwillingly, Lady Hester and her friends allowed them to go, making them promise to light a fire so soon as they reached the land. In what bitter reflections did the unfortunates indulge as they shivered there in the darkness, rinsed by the waves, lashed by the rain, buffeted by the wind, stupefied by the moaning voices of the raging sea! The doctor, as he tightened his belt by a hole, did not rail against those brutes of Greeks. At last a flame perforated the night. Then nothing more. A timid sun succeeded in piercing the curtains of clouds, then declined towards the horizon. It was thirty hours since the shipwrecked had eaten anything. The doctor was sure that these brutes had abandoned them without remorse. Suddenly, the piercing sight of Lady Hester descried a black speck which finally became a boat. The calumniated crew, with the exception of the master, who had preferred to direct the rescue from a distance, was returning, bringing bread, cheese and water. But the sailors had consoled themselves abundantly on land with arrack; they were drunk, and their insolence increased every minute. All the alcohol which they had consumed rendered them indifferent to the squalls of wind and rain which had begun again. Deaf to the entreaties of the passengers, they decided to embark forthwith.

Lady Hester and her friends preferred to run the risk of sudden death rather than perish slowly of inanition on that forlorn rock. They landed safe and sound, to the general astonishment, and took refuge in a neighbouring hamlet, miserable and leprous. Filthy houses! The English would not have been willing to use them as pigsties. The rain penetrated them, and the bed of manure spread on the ground exhaled a nauseating odour. And an increasing invasion of shaggy rats and of voracious fleas!

The doctor set out for Rhodes in all haste in order to bring back money and provisions. The bey received him very badly, though it is true that the doctor cut a very sorry figure in his garments of a rescued traveller. Meantime, Lady Hester, who had endeavoured to leave the hovel in which she was stranded, had fallen ill on the way. She had nothing by way of luggage except General Moore's miniature, a snuff-box given her by Lord Sligo, and two pelisses. Precious souvenirs, no doubt, but of no utility. The consul, who was an old man of seventy-five, was unable to do anything for them, and the bey pretended to be so poor that, after having granted them thirty pounds, he begged them not to trouble him further. Thirty pounds! It was little for eleven persons naked and famished.

The loss the most irreparable was that of the medicine chest. Finally, however, everything was arranged. Lady Hester, whose adventurous character accommodated itself to the unexpected, praised the Turks warmly: "I do not know how it is done, but I am always at ease with them and I obtain all that I ask for. As for the Greeks, it is quite different; they are cheats, cheats...." The doctor had made a good recruit.

Lady Hester, who resigned herself to the misadventures of the others as readily as she did to her own, wrote, in speaking of Bruce, Pearce and Meryon, to one of her friends: "They are quite well; they have saved nothing from the wreck; but do not imagine that we are melancholy, at any rate, for we have all danced, myself included, the Pyrrhic dance with the peasants of the villages which were on our way!" What an exceptional character! A woman who has lost all her trunks and who dances the Pyrrhic dance!

The doctor, who had been despatched on a confidential mission to Smyrna, to bring back money, without which one can do nothing in the Orient, and clothes, without which one can go nowhere, returned with boxes and coffers.

Lady Hester, Bruce and Pearce threw themselves upon him like children and arrayed themselves as fancy dictated. They donned magnificent and strange costumes, which seemed to form part of a vast Turkish emporium. The doctor completed his accoutrement by thrusting a yataghan through his girdle.

Lady Hester, finding herself very much at her ease with her Turkish robe, her turban and her burnous, decreed that she should travel thus henceforth. And the wearing of this masculine costume was to remove many difficulties in permitting her to move everywhere with her face uncovered. From his stay in Rhodes the doctor preserved two principal recollections: first, that the English raise the cost of living wherever they go; next, that the women of the island weave very durable silk shirts, which can be worn for three years without tearing them.

Captain Henry Hope, commanding the frigate Salsette, in the harbour of Smyrna, having learned of Lady Hester's shipwreck, came to fetch her to convey her to Egypt. At the beginning of February, 1812, the Salsette entered the port of Alexandria. Colonel Misset, the English Resident, was full of kindness and attentions; he laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the singular costumes of the travellers and gave them advice as to their behaviour. Lady Hester took a violent dislike to the town. "The place is hideous," said she twenty-four hours after her arrival; "and if all Egypt resembles it, I feel that I shall not stay there long."

The French occupation was remembered by everyone, but the Christians of Alexandria had peculiar taste and coldly confessed their preference for Turkish rule. What a difference between the justice meted out by the French and that by the Turks! With the cadi, when a man was accused of murder, the case was not protracted. He was confronted with the witnesses, and then and there he was either released, or imprisoned, or bastinadoed or executed. If he were thrown into prison, the amount of compensation was immediately fixed, at five, ten, one hundred piastres, according to the importance of the victim and the means of the assassin. The latter circumvented influential friends; it was necessary for the friends to be influential.

"Come," said they, "a thousand piastres, between us, if you say a word for him."

They made discreet inquiries of the Governor's mistress for the time being, whom a diamond ring persuaded to intercede for the unfortunate man. Entreated on the right, supplicated on the left, solicited at the baths, tormented in his harem, harpooned by some, harassed by others, the Governor ended by demanding mercy, remitted the fine and released the prisoner. At any rate, they knew what to expect; it was clear, plain, precise, if not just. While with the French—Oh! There now! A poor little crime of no importance at all dragged on for months, for years.... And how could you expect that a lawsuit would not be perpetuated when there were so many notaries, so many attorneys, so many advocates, clerks, registrars and scribes interested in prolonging.

Lady Hester proceeded to Rosetta—town with this charming name, guarded by its ramparts of red bricks and its groves of palm-trees, from where she intended to ascend the course of the Nile so far as Cairo. She hired two boats, and the wonderful voyage began. Wide, powerful, calm, impressive and deep, it was truly the king of rivers, the river which gives life, the river which saves.... Flotillas of earthen jars tied together by branches followed the current of the stream. Kanjes bearing beehives, piled up in the form of pyramids, descended slowly. They were the bees which had flown to meet the spring, and which, having left two months earlier for the plains of Upper Egypt, where the sainfoin and the clover were already ripening, were now returning with their golden booty towards the Delta. The travellers met innumerable barges with curved prows and rafts laden with big restless oxen. At the villages they revictualled in flour, eggs and poultry. They took their meals on board and the days slipped by like hours. Sometimes the banks were high and the water very low, and curious persons landed to get a view of the land. They returned very quickly towards the boat, disappointed by the sadness and the monotony of the immense plains with their trifling undulations, rebuffed by the hostile reception of the hamlets: mass of mud, huts of loam, labyrinth of alleys where the foot slips in dried camel-dung, headlong flight of the women who hide themselves, squalling of children at the maternal heels, grumbling of fellahs suspecting the tax-gatherers, baying of dogs, putrid odour which rises from beings and things which decomposition lies in wait for.

The Arabs say that if Mahomet had tasted the water of the Nile, he would have wished to remain in this world to drink it. But the doctor preserved his preference for the growths of France, nay, even for the resinous wines of Chio.

At Boulak the voyage stopped. The harbour was swarming with those tiny donkey-drivers who make such incredible charges. Shaking their saddles with the tall pummels decorated with tassels, mirrors and pendants, waving their glass trinkets, decked out, ornamented, like shrines, their mischievous eyes watching the customer, making ready to rush so soon as they catch sight of a Turkish soldier, whose stern countenance implies an empty purse (an astute trick of their masters!), they hailed in our travellers a fine windfall.

Scarcely was Lady Hester installed with Bruce in a house at Cairo than she prepared for her visit to the pacha. She adopted for this solemn occasion a Berber costume, of which the wild magnificence suited her proud and independent demeanour. Trousers of dazzling silk laminated with gold, heavy robe of purplish velvet ornamented with rude and sumptuous embroidery, shawl of cashmere forming turban and girdle, sabre with hilt encrusted with precious stones. It had cost her more than £300. Bruce treated himself to a sword worth 1000 piastres. As for the doctor, he was satisfied with the modest apparel of an Effendi.

The Pacha sent five horses richly caparisoned in the Mameluke fashion, on which Lady Hester and her suite mounted to go to the palace. They alighted only in the second court.

Mehemet Ali, who had never seen Englishwomen, was greatly delighted at this interview, and awaited his fair visitor in a pavilion in the midst of the gardens of the harem. He rose to go to meet her and made her sit on divans of scarlet satin which were covered with precious filigree-work. Mosaics rambled over the open walls, singing all the gamut of blues: warm blues, blues deep and velvety, mauve blues, blues with reflections of silver. Stained-glass windows muffled the light received by the transparent enamels and arabesques of gold where slept dead turquoises, monstrous rubies and emeralds. A jet of water fell back weeping into a shining basin.

Black slave girls handed crystal cups in which slowly dissolved sherbets made of pistachio-nuts. Lady Hester refused the pipe which was offered her; she was later on to smoke like a stove. By the aid of an interpreter, Mehemet Ali, who was a man of slight figure and richly dressed, talked with her for nearly an hour. This magnificent specimen of the English race was to fill him with admiration for a country which produced such women. Fascinated by her abnormal dimensions, attracted by the strength, the determination and the will which could be read on her haughty features, he compared her mentally to those comical beings who peopled his harem and asked himself if humanity were not composed of men, women and Englishwomen—an intermediary sex. Moreover, he reviewed his troops before her and made her a present of a magnificent Arab stallion. However, the handsome Mamelukes so celebrated had disappeared in the horrible massacre of the preceding year. Abdah Bey, who was the flower of the Court, was unwilling to be behindhand and presented her with a thoroughbred. These two horses were sent later to England: one to the Duke of York, for whom Lady Hester had retained a kindly preference, the other to Viscount Ebrington, under the care of the servant Ibrahim. Bruce was not forgotten in this exchange of compliments and received a sabre and a cashmere.

The spring advanced, the amusements multiplied: opening of a mummy and extraction of a tooth in a perfect state of preservation by a French surgeon—foolish diversion!—Egyptian dancing-girls, excursions to the Pyramids of Gizeh under the escort of the Mamelukes.

At length, on May 11, 1812, the faithful friends of Lady Hester: Bruce and Pearce, who took a liking to the adventure, the doctor—who regretted already the amber-coloured Egyptian women, moulded in their chemises of blue cotton, Venuses tanned by the sting of a too ardent sun—embarked at Damietta for Palestine, for Jerusalem. Two French Mamelukes, as bodyguards, with their syces, the English lady's-maid, a groom, three men-servants, a porter, followed.

And all this company was not too much to transport the six great green tents decorated with flowers, the numerous chests of palm-wood, light and tough, which contained all the outfit of the caravan to replace what had disappeared in the shipwreck off Rhodes.

CHAPTER IV
EXCURSION IN THE HOLY LAND

WHAT did Lady Hester intend to do in Syria and in Palestine?

She did not intend to seek oblivion, for the necessity of getting herself talked about, and the thirst for a celebrity which she strove vainly to retain, formed part of her nature, and she never got rid of it.

She resembled closely her grandfather, Lord Chatham. She had not only his grey eyes, which anger darkened strangely, and of which no one was able, at that time, to stand the glance, but also the inexorable will, the terrible passions, the continuous tension of the mind in the direction of one single object without troubling about the obstacles to be overthrown or the means employed to conquer them.

Grattan, in the curious portrait which he has traced of the first Pitt, wrote: "The Minister was alone. Modern degeneracy had not touched him. An old-fashioned inflexibility governed this character which knew neither how to alter nor to become supple.... Creator, destroyer, reformer, he had received from Heaven all that was required to convoke men into a social group, to break their bonds or to reform them...." Lady Hester had inherited these astonishing gifts, which her unconventional education had still further strengthened. Under the eyes of her frightened governesses who had abandoned the impossible task of making her a young girl like the others, without the knowledge of her father and her stepmother, who, besides, were not interested in the matter, she sprouted forth luxuriantly. In the same way as her figure and her "little" foot, never constrained, developed magnificently, her luminous intelligence, her originality, her energy, her rough clear-sightedness forcibly asserted themselves. Never contradicted, she might be proud of her qualities and of her extraordinary faults, proud also of that indomitable character which she had alone formed and which never inclined before anyone, ignorant at once of the art of changing principles or that of humouring public opinion by half-loyal measures or proceedings.

Amongst all those wonderful women in which the eighteenth century, according to Burke, was so fertile, Lady Hester Stanhope has a place apart. The Duchess of Rutland, the Duchess of Gordon, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mrs. Bouverie, the Marchioness of Salisbury, Mrs. Crewe, Lady Bessborough, Lady Liverpool and many others, who had on their side fortune, beauty, charm, fascination and grace, cannot be compared to her. Morally and physically, Lady Hester is outside the picture. She is the echo, not only of the feminine character of her time, but of the characteristic tendencies of her age. Preoccupation with the Eastern problem, misanthropy, taste for action, hatred of hypocrisy, love of social questions and contempt for the people, were imperfectly embodied, but they were embodied all the same.

Her misfortune was to be a woman. So long as her uncle Pitt had been near her, she had been able to imagine that she had changed her sex. She had lived, acted and thought as a man, but as a man who would have been a beautiful woman and whom the admiration of the crowd retains far from the combats of politics and the struggle of life.

William Pitt had certainly been, according to the admirable phrase of Mirabeau, "the Minister of Preparations." He had seen the French Revolution approaching, and long before all others he had understood the danger of it. Joining then the fate of France—for which he entertained neither antipathy nor hatred—with that of the Revolution, he engaged England in that formidable struggle of which he could not foresee the issue. Killed by "the glance of Austerlitz," he died too soon to reap the fruit of his wonderful perspicacity. He died, above all, too soon for Hester Stanhope, whose future he had not assured. There did not fail, certainly, statesmen behind whom a pretty woman was bestirring herself, champion of their policy, to cite only that charming Georgina Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, who displayed in Fox's favour an indomitable energy, not fearing to splash about in the mud and kiss butchers with her patrician lips in order to exercise the omnipotence of her persuasion over the Westminster shopkeepers at the time of the famous elections of 1784. So well that Pitt was to write to Wilberforce, who was anxious: "Westminster is going well in spite of the Duchess of Devonshire and other women of the people, but it is not known yet when the voting will be finished."

But the statesman chosen was only a screen which permitted the spirit of intrigue which breathed amongst the great ladies of the English aristocracy to have free course. For Lady Hester, William Pitt was the reason of existence. When he disappeared, what was she able to do?

He said to his niece, after having lived a long time with her, that he did not know whether she were more at her ease in the whirlpool of pleasures and fêtes, in the perplexity of politics or in the most profound solitude. Sometimes, in fact, Lady Hester went into Society eagerly and carried into the world her extraordinary brilliancy, her satire, humour and her biting wit, feared almost as much as the strokes of Gilray's pencil. Sometimes, she shut herself up with her uncle, serving him as secretary, astonishing him by the correctness of her judgment, by the comprehension and knowledge of men which this child of twenty years possessed, and without which the finest gifts of the understanding are reduced to sterility and do not descend from the domain of pure ideas to that of reality. Sometimes, she fled to Walmer Castle; and there, occupying herself in causing trees to be planted, in designing gardens, she bathed in silence and meditation. But now the world, she was surfeited with it!... She had just experienced the fragility of its infatuations. Politics! She was henceforth outside everything, and she had to witness the triumph of Pitt's enemies, the forgetfulness of his services. This power of money would have been necessary in order to struggle against the coteries of the drawing-room, the personal enmities which she had created. And she had only the pension of £1200 granted her in accordance with Pitt's last wish. There remained retirement. For the conquered, retirement is unendurable in the places which were witnesses of their past successes, unless they are surrounded by dear friends whose presence consoles them and makes them forget. Lord Camelford, whom she had thought for a moment of marrying, had quarrelled with the Pitts over a matter of money; he had given his sister—which assuredly he had the right to do—an estate which Lord Chatham hoped to inherit. Sir John Moore had just been killed. She dreamed of far-off solitudes, and she thought of undertaking an expedition which would cover her name with glory and whose fame would reach England.

Horace Walpole, an unsparing critic of his contemporaries, said of Chatham that he was "master of all the arts of dissimulation, slave of his passions, and that he simulated even extravagance to insure success." Under the smoke of gossip and tittle-tattle he hatches always a fire of truth. The second part of the portrait can apply as well to the granddaughter as to the grandfather. Lady Hester was enslaved by a redoubtable passion: ambition, and ambition without object. Well women incarnate almost always their aspirations, their desires, their admirations and their hatreds in living beings and real things: concrete which, after being the symbol of the abstract, is confounded with it to make only one. Lady Hester did not escape the common rule; solitude became little by little the means of getting herself still talked about; then became peopled by escorts, caravans and Arab chiefs; her ambition was not quicker than hatred of her enemies and disgust of England, and she determined upon this journey across the unknown East, journey which would serve at once her need of solitude and of celebrity in astonishing the world. Only, she possessed—as much on the side of Pitt as of Stanhope—a slight taste for eccentricity. She had no need to simulate an extravagance, which was natural to her; she was inclined to do nothing like other people.

Unconsciously also, a mysterious reason urged Lady Hester to choose Syria, and particularly Jerusalem, for the theatre of her exploits. It was nothing less than a prediction of Brothers. A figure strange, this Brothers, who created a sensation towards the end of the eighteenth century.

A former lieutenant in the Navy, his imagination became disordered in meditating upon the most obscure passages of the Apocalypse; the endless leisure which voyages permit are truly pernicious for feeble minds.... He soon abandoned his career and modestly assumed the title of "Nephew of God and Prince of the Hebrews," consecrating himself entirely to the divine mission which he believed he had received. He lived in an agreeable hallucination. "After which, being in a vision," said he, "I saw the angel of God by my side, and Satan, who was walking carelessly in the streets of London." Even when quite mad the English preserve a sense of humour!

So long as Brothers contented himself with predicting the approaching destruction of London and the restoration of the Kingdom of Judea, the Government did not trouble, but the situation changed when the vague prophecies were transformed into imperious advice to the King:

"The Eternal God commands me to make known to you, George III, King of England, that immediately after the revelation of my person to the Hebrews of London as their prince, and to all the nations as their governor, you must lay down your crown, in order that all your power and your authority may cease."

But no time was lost in sending this troublesome person to Bedlam. Before going, he bestirred himself so much and to such good purpose to obtain a visit from Lady Hester that this singular request reached the ears of Pitt's niece. Curious to make the acquaintance of the prophet, she hastened to accede to his wish. Brothers solemnly predicted to her that "she would go one day to Jerusalem, and would lead the Chosen People; that on her arrival in the Holy Land there would be upheavals in the world and that she would pass seven years in the desert." While she was rusticating at Brousse, two Englishmen, who were passing through it and who knew the prophecy, amused themselves about her great future. "You will go to Jerusalem, Lady Hester," said they; "you will go. Esther, Queen of the Jews! Hester, Queen of the Jews!"

Did the coincidence of the names strike her, or did this programme fascinate her by its novelty? Did she consider Brothers as an inoffensive lunatic or as a visionary of genius? She was not yet the sorceress of Djoun, believing firmly in magicians and enchanted serpents. But many sensible men, such as William Sharp, who had even given to the world a fine engraving of the prophet, with these words: "Believing firmly that this is the man chosen of God, I have engraved his portrait," and as Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, an Indian official and translator of the code of Geptoo laws, if it please you, had publicly proclaimed themselves his disciples.

However that may be, Lady Hester took, with the handsome Colonel Bruce, the road to Jerusalem, wearing the costume of the Egyptian Mamelukes: short bolero of red satin, purple tunic without sleeves, gallooned with gold, wide trousers of which the multiple folds had the thickness of drapery, cashmere shawl twisting like a turban around her head. All that formed a symphony of red, which blazed forth when she partially opened the great white burnous which hid her entirely during her ramblings on horseback. They only proceeded so far as Jaffa; Jaffa which bathes the foot of its dirty houses in the sea, and which the pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, after the Easter festival, fill with confusion and noise, transforming the little dead town of fishermen into a comical fair in which all the idioms of creation are entangled.

They were received by the English consular agent. He was a person called Damiani, a compromise between the patriarch and the Italian merchant, but in which the patriarch held the upper hand, an active man of sixty, wearing a singular costume: an old Eastern robe of sky-blue, lined with ermine, dirty trousers from which burst out two grey legs, head-dress à la française, that is to say, hair worn in a thick iron-grey queue, and above all ... above all, an immense three-cornered hat, polished by the years, soaked with sweat and dust since the Egyptian campaign. Three-cornered hat which was to amuse royally the Princess of Wales during her famous journey to Jerusalem, and which was to make Alphonse de Lamartine smile gently twenty years later.

Mohammed Aga, Governor of Jaffa, believing that it was an affair of some pious lady of little importance, was hardly civil and did not facilitate in any way the organisation of the caravan. Lady Hester never forgave him.

On May 18, 1812, eleven camels and thirteen horses left the town, conveying the travellers, save Pearce, who was keeping apart. By Gudd and Ramle they made their way towards the Holy City. It was harvest-time. Armed with short reaping-hooks, the peasants cut the barley, fresh barley which formed in the arid landscape islets of shade and points of velvet on which the eye lingered. Naked gold-coloured children followed the horses to offer some ears of corn in exchange for a serious backsheesh, and the doctor, in throwing them the piastres, declared sadly that no people knew better how to extort presents.

The mountains assumed a severe aspect. The path plunged into the rock like a nail into a wall. They reached a village amongst the fig-trees, where they were courteously received by the king of the mountain, the great sheik Abu Ghosh, who held in his hands the keys of Jerusalem. Detested by the surrounding pachas, feared by the travellers, he lived in independent existence in the midst of his hardy and brave mountaineers. Imposing dues at his pleasure upon the caravans, holding the pilgrims to ransom, levying taxes upon the convents, compelling the monks to bring out their little savings, he reigned without dispute over the mountains of Judea, from Ramle to Jerusalem, from Hebron to Jericho. Abu Ghosh was one of the most astonished of men to see a European woman arrive, surrounded by so numerous a suite, mounted on excellent horses. Ordinarily, the travellers contented themselves with wretched animals and clothed themselves in rags to pass unnoticed. The sheik, delighted to make the acquaintance of an English princess and fascinated by the haughty dignity of her manners, treated her very well. His four wives hastened to cook a delicate supper: vine-leaves filled with meat, stuffed pumpkins, roast mutton, chicken swimming in an ocean of boiled rice.

And the doctor thought sadly that this modest repast was the highest point of the culinary art of the Arabs.

When night came, Abu Ghosh installed himself with his pipes and his wives at the corner of the fire and watched over the sleep of the woman who had committed herself to his care. Early in the morning they separated as friends, and one of the sheik's brothers protected Lady Hester so far as Jerusalem.

Monotony of a poor land, and all at once, like a town of clouds, an apparition of the Middle Ages, loopholed walls and belfries, belfries and cupolas!... After having vigorously driven away the dragomans of the Franciscan monastery who clung to them tenaciously, and pointed them out in advance to Turkish cupidity, Lady Hester wandered into Jerusalem as her fancies dictated.

Accompanied by twenty horsemen, she made her way to Kengi-Ahmed, governor of the town. The seraglio partly opened its grated windows, eyelids closed by an unconquerable sleep on the Mosque of Omar, the holy mosque with its Persian and blue mosaics surrounded by gardens of cypress-trees. She went to the Holy Sepulchre, and her visit was not characterised by the meditation usually associated with a pilgrimage, not even with a pilgrimage undertaken for artistic purposes. The monks had, contrary to their custom, closed the doors of the church. They solemnly opened them and came in procession to meet her carrying lighted candles. The crowd, curious to see the spectacle, collected and vociferated in chorus. The police kept it at a distance by blows from cudgels. Lady Hester relieved the necessities of a Mameluke who had escaped the previous year from the Cairo massacre. When Emin Bey—that was his name—had heard the first shots fired by the Albanian soldiers massed on the walls, when the great slaughter had begun, he had comprehended that his only chance of safety lay in headlong flight. Then he had driven his spurs into his horse's flanks, and raising the animal, which was rearing and neighing with terror, he had leaped from the platform facing the citadel to the foot of the ramparts—a leap of forty-five or sixty feet. He had afterwards succeeded in reaching Jerusalem by the desert, not without having been first overpowered and robbed by the guides who conducted him. Since that time he had stooped to live on alms.

She sauntered in the infamous alleys of the Ghetto (Was it necessary to facilitate Brothers' task?), meeting children oldish-looking and shrivelled, the Jews of Central Europe with their orange-coloured greatcoats, wearing their tall skin caps and their abject air.

On May 30, Lady Stanhope, after a visit to Bethlehem, village of Judea, over which hover the glad memories of the Christ, where long lines of women defile like shadows, wearing with serene gravity their horned head-dresses and their trailing blue robes, reached St. Jean d'Acre by way of Atlitt beach, on which are engulfed the last vestiges of Pelerin Castle, and Haifa in the shadow of Mount Carmel. The road soon became more frequented. It was marked out by carcases. It seemed a giant abattoir. Dead horses, of which the inhabitants of the town had got rid; camels which had fallen exhausted on returning from a distant journey sick asses despatched on the spot. From this charnel-house issued an acrid and warm odour which turned the stomach. As the caravan passed, clouds of blue flies buzzed by in clusters, and yellow dogs fled growling and watched from a distance these intruders who came to share in their festival banquet. The sun burned with a malicious pleasure these heads half gnawed away, these eviscerated bodies, this greenish flesh. And the old bones, already picked clean by the jackals and washed by the rains, sparkled here and there, like great white flowers on the fields of corruption.

CHAPTER V
IN THE COUNTRY OF DJEZZAR PACHA AND THE EMIR BECHIR

ST. JEAN D'ACRE stretches out into the sea like a greyhound which stretches himself lazily in the sun. The tiny harbour seemed to have been scooped out to satisfy the caprice of some royal child. The mosque, Jama-el-Geydd, darted towards the sky, throwing like an imperious prayer its threatening minaret, and the multitude of the palm-trees crowded around it. And when the evening brought the sea breeze, they lamented and moaned like men, and the hushed waters in their marble fountains wept in distant echo in the sacred court. This mosque was one of the most beautiful of the Syrian coast, the antique debris of Ascalon and Cæsarea having covered with diversified mosaics, porphyry and jade the walls and floor. Amidst the verdure of the inner gardens roamed in a blaze of red and yellow flowers, the basins of painted earthenware, the santons and the tombs.

Lady Hester was the guest of Mr. Catafago, a personage in Syria, whom his title of agents of Europeans, his trading and his riches, had rendered celebrated. With his intelligent and keen countenance, his air of authority, his flashing eyes, this man had acquired an extraordinary ascendency over the Arabs and the Turks. It was he who facilitated Lamartine's journey in the Holy Land, and rendered it, if not comfortable, at least possible.

Lady Hester, in strolling through the town, was astonished to meet a number of people with faces atrociously mutilated. Some had no nose; to others a ear was wanting, sometimes two; several were one-eyed. Puzzled, she made inquiries of Hadji Ali, a janissary of St. Jean d'Acre, whom she had promoted to the high rank of inspector of the luggage. Former soldier of Djezzar Pacha, he had his memory haunted by nightmare visions, and related concerning his master ghastly stories. Although he had been dead for four years, the inhabitants were hardly beginning to emerge from the Red Terror under which they had lived and to breathe more freely. Ahmed Djezzar was born in Bosnia. At the age of sixteen he left Bosnia and went to Constantinople, and afterwards to Cairo. There, bought by Ali Bey for his Mamelukes, he specialised with so much enthusiasm in missions of assassination that he acquired his redoubtable surname of Djezzar (slaughterer). Having, by chance, refused to put to death a friend of Ali, he took to flight to escape his vengeance.

He made his way to the Druses, where he received hospitality from the Emir Yusef, who appointed him Aga, then governor of Bairout. Djezzar betrayed him. Yusef, furious, made an alliance with Dahers, sheik of one of the Arab tribes of the coast. Besieged in the town, Djezzar defended himself like a devil, walled up twenty Christians alive in his walls to render them more solid, and surrendered finally to Dahers, who, fascinated by his courage, gave him his friendship and the command of an expedition to Palestine. Unhappy idea! Djezzar went over to the Turks again. And, a little later, a war having broken out between the pachas of Syria and the Porte, he was ordered to reduce St. Jean d'Acre. His knowledge of the country having assured success, he surprised Dahers and killed him with his own hand.

Appointed afterwards pacha of Acre and Sidon, then of Damascus, he was able to abandon himself without restraint to his sanguinary tastes and to his love of butchery. Traitor to his country, to his benefactors, sold to the highest bidders, vile and dishonourable, he lived peacefully until the age of eighty-eight, when the dagger of a relative of one of his numerous victims came to put an end to his exploits.

Amidst the annals of Turkish history, so heavy with murders and cruel massacres, so stained with blood, so filled with the lamentations of thousands of unhappy people put to torture, Djezzar's reign shone with a singular brightness.

Hadji Ali showed Lady Hester the pavilion which Djezzar Pacha usually occupied. He used to have his divan placed near the window and to watch the street. Did he catch sight of a passer-by whose face, clothing or figure displeased him, he sent to fetch him. If the unhappy man attempted resistance, the officer, who did not care to incur his master's anger, used force. When he was brought, more dead than alive, before Djezzar, the latter said to him: "Thy face does not please me," or, "Thou hast an evil eye," or again, in turning towards the executioner, who followed him like his shadow: "A fellow so ugly is unworthy to live; he is surely a child of the devil." And for love of art he caused ears, noses and heads to be cut off.

Sometimes he showed an amiable caprice. His guards having arrested all the persons who were passing along the principal street of St. Jean d'Acre at a certain hour, he had them drawn up on either side of his divan, indiscriminately, and after having gloated for a time over their mortal agony, he pronounced sentence in an indifferent voice: "Let the prisoners on the right be hanged and let an ample breakfast be provided for those on the left!"

One day, when the barber, who was ordered to pluck out an eye from a passing stranger, hesitated for a moment, Djezzar said: "Oh! Oh! thou art squeamish! Perhaps, it is because thou knowest not how to do it. Come here; I am going to teach thee." And the pacha, plunging the forefinger of his right hand into the orbit, threw the man's eye on to his face.

The recital of such atrocities would pass for a tale in the style of Bluebeard if the slashed faces of hundreds of men did not attest the frightful reality of it. It is useful for the moment to show how the varnish of Eastern civilisation cracks to allow us to catch a glimpse of the abysses of cruelty and barbarism unknown to European mentality.

St. Jean d'Acre was at that time the only town in Syria where the shopkeepers were not tempted to rob their customers or to use false weights and false measures. Caught in the act, they were, in fact, nailed by the tongue to the doors of their shops. The butchers enjoyed favourable treatment: they were suspended from the crooked iron hooks intended to suspend the choice morsels.

But the recollection the most horrible, which still caused the narrator to lower his voice, as though the terrible pacha was concealed in order to listen to him, was that of the Mameluke mutiny.

Djezzar, as Pacha of Damascus, had every year to escort the pilgrims to Mecca. He had brought with him half his Mamelukes, about two hundred. The others remained at St. Jean d'Acre under the command of his Khasnadar, who had been appointed regent in his absence. Well, the white beauties of his harem—they numbered a hundred, it was whispered—became very bored, and the eunuchs, relaxing their vigilance, the Mamelukes forced the doors of the women's apartments. The Khasnadar reserved for himself the pacha's favourite, Zulyka. Hardly had the pacha returned than he found in the ladies of his harem a perceptible change. From observation to suspicion was but a step, which Djezzar quickly took. The attitude of the Mamelukes appeared to him suspicious, and he resolved to make an example which would in future prevent the most bold from attempting his honour.

In order to separate the innocent from the guilty, he ordered Selim, the Khasnadar's brother, to assemble the troops at Khan Hasbeiya, giving as a pretext an expedition against the Emir Yusef. The Hawarys, the Arnautes, the Dellatis, all the garrison of the town, rejoined their concentration camps. The two hundred Mamelukes, whom he had mentally sacrificed, alone remained at St. Jean d'Acre. Proof alone was wanting. Chance undertook to furnish him with it.

Happening to be one day near the famous window, he saw an old man who, with a nosegay in his hand, knocked at the door of the harem and handed it to a slave. Well, flowers are, in the East, the language of love; letters and messengers are too dangerous to make use of, and carnations, lilies and roses serve as billets-doux. On entering the women's apartments, Djezzar saw the nosegay in the hands of the charming Zulyka.

A new Methridates, he compelled Momene to confess her love.

"Come here, little girl," said he to her; "where didst thou get that nosegay?"

She replied very quickly:

"I gathered it in the garden."

The pacha assumed an indulgent air.

"Come, come!" he rejoined, "I am better informed than thee. I saw the Christian Nummun who was bringing it. Tell me, my child, who is thy lover, and I will see if I can give thee him in marriage. I intend to find a husband for thee."

The imprudent Zulyka took him seriously and mentioned the Khasnadar's name.

Then, changing countenance, Djezzar rushed upon her and, seizing her by the hair, dragged her to the ground.

"Wretch!" cried he, "confess the truth. Thou hast already avowed thy crime, and only the denunciation of thy accomplices can still save thee."

In vain Zulyka protested and cried out that she was innocent. With a blow of his scimitar he cut off her head.

An order was given to four Hawarys soldiers, who went into the harem and began their work of death. At the shrieks of the women, the Mamelukes, who were in the courtyard of the seraglio, understood that something serious was happening. Seizing their arms, they shut themselves up in the Khasnadar's apartments, which formed an isolated tower, provided with doors studded with iron and solid bars to protect the treasure. They blocked up all the outlets and waited.

It was then that the drama grew serious. Djezzar, furious, summoned them to evacuate the place. Their reply was frank.

"We belong to thee, it is true. But thou hast so often steeped thy hands in human blood, and thou art so thirsty for ours, that our resolution is irrevocably taken."

And as the powder magazine communicated with the treasury, they added:

"If you attempt to dislodge us, we shall defend ourselves until our ammunition is exhausted, and then we shall set fire to the powder. And our death will be followed by the fall of Djezzar and the destruction of St. Jean d'Acre. But if you allow us to depart safe and sound, we shall abandon all idea of vengeance, and you will never hear our names mentioned again."

The pacha fell into a violent rage; some women he caused to be thrown into a trench filled with quicklime; others were sewn up in sacks and cast into the sea. The inhabitants lived in mortal terror and burrowed in their houses.

One night, the Mamelukes, taking the ropes which bound the ingots of gold, and sawing through the bars, succeeded in effecting their escape, not without having made a large breach in the treasury. Exhausted, breathless, their clothes in rags, their hands stained with blood, they arrived at Khan Hasbeiya. Horrified at the sight they presented, Selim hastened to take his brother's side. The rebellion spread from place to place, and all the troops rose in revolt against Djezzar. Allying themselves with the Druses of Yusef, they seized Sidon and Tyre and marched on St. Jean d'Acre. Djezzar's situation was critical; but, though abandoned by all, he remained firm as a rock. His counsellors, whom his approaching fall incited to courage, urged him to abdicate in order to save the town from the sufferings of a siege.

"Go, my friends, God will arrange everything," replied he in a bantering tone, "and I shall have at some not distant day the pleasure of thanking you for your prudent counsels!"

Understanding the part which morale plays even in the best organised army, he spread, by the aid of emissaries and spies cleverly instructed, ideas of defeat in the enemy's camp.

By cunning speeches he gained over to his cause some inhabitants of Acre who were fit to bear arms, and mingled them with the workmen constantly employed on the public works. He collected thus a little force which surprised and overthrew the assailants. The Mamelukes fled beyond the seas. Djezzar completed the glutting of his wrath by causing the women who had escaped the massacres to be flogged. They were then thrown naked into the bottom of the hold of a ship and sold in the slave markets of Constantinople. The trees of the garden were cut down, and even the cats of the harem were not spared in the general slaughter. Never had Djezzar better deserved his name. Then tranquillity returned to the town.

And then one day one of those famous Mamelukes had the audacity to return to the palace. His name was Soliman. Djezzar recognised him immediately, and his features assumed such an expression of rage that all the officers present turned pale and instinctively closed their eyes.

The pacha brandished his axe.

"Wretch!" cried he. "What have you come to do here?"

"To die at thy feet, for I prefer that fate to that of living at a distance from thee."

The axe flashed in the light.

"You know well, however, that Djezzar has never pardoned?"

Soliman repeated his answer.