“Things were in this state when fresh misfortunes befell him. He was on the point of realising the profits of his enterprise, when war broke out between France and Spain. Immediately upon the first disasters of
the French arms, his buildings were burned, his furnaces destroyed, and his hopes annihilated. The ruin of his fortune was almost complete, and he only supported himself by selling, one by one, the costly jewels he had brought from India. All these misfortunes impaired his reason; he had continued fits of overwrought devotion, amounting at times to insanity. His family lived on in this way until 1815, in a state of mediocrity very hard to endure after their brilliant condition and their opulence in past years.
“In 1815, Loustannau’s only surviving son, who was a captain in the imperial guards, was dangerously wounded at Waterloo. His father saw himself on the point of losing him, and this shock seemed to restore to him the possession of his faculties. When he recovered, all the revived energies of his character were concentrated on the thought, how destitute would be the state of his family after his death; he determined, therefore to return to India, though many years had elapsed since he left it. His son wished to go in his stead, but he would not hear of this; and in 1816 he embarked for Egypt, having raised the necessary funds for his journey by pledging a ruby of rare value, the last gift of his Mahratta patron. Not finding in Egypt an opportunity of pursuing his way by the Red Sea, he crossed over to Syria, with the intention of joining the caravan from Damascus to Bassorah; but he fell dangerously ill at Acre, his brain being again affected; he squandered away all his money in his delirium, and destroyed bills of exchange and other valuable papers. After this, he suffered for awhile all the horrors of penury, and the renowned Loustannau—’The Lion of the State and the Tiger in War’—was reduced to earn his bread as a day-labourer. In this
deplorable condition he was found by M. Catafago, a wealthy Levantine merchant, who relieved his wants and took him into his house.
“Loustannau had occasionally lucid intervals, in which he talked of his past greatness, and related the history of his life and his afflictions; but he had the mortification of seeing that everything he uttered seemed to his hearers but an additional proof of his insanity. To make all sure, however, letters were written to France, requesting information respecting this extraordinary man; and at last his son, who had heard nothing of him for two years, made all haste to Syria, and found his unfortunate father almost wholly deprived of reason. His journey to India was henceforth clearly impossible. The Captain had gathered together the last remnants of his fortune; and he remained for some time in Syria, doing everything that affection could suggest, in the hope of restoring his father to himself.
“It was at this period that the old man’s melancholy story reached the ears of Lady Hester Stanhope. She was then in the hey-day of her fame, and she offered Loustannau and his son an asylum in her house. At the first sight of the latter, she was struck with the resemblance that he bore to the gallant lover she had lost. From the lines of his hand, the form of his foot, and the aspect of the stars, she gathered that the life of Captain Loustannau was destined to be inseparably connected with her own. The Captain, however, had not lost sight of his Indian project, for he still hoped to recover some remains of the vast property his father must have left in that country. Lady Hester dissuaded him from going to India, and undertook to employ every possible means of recovering what remained of
the old General’s property or fortune; but great changes had occurred since the old man had left the country. Wellesley’s (Wellington) victories had put the English in possession of a great portion of the Mahratta territory; Loustannau’s princely protectors were no more, and his property had passed into other hands.
“It was a singular chance that brought together in a corner of Syria two beings so remarkable as General Loustannau and Lady Hester Stanhope; they had long, mystical conversations together, and Lady Hester looked on Loustannau as a prophet who was come to prepare the way for her, and to be the forerunner of her triumph. The Captain sought to beguile the tedium of his existence by managing the household and the pecuniary affairs of Lady Hester. She treated him with the most assiduous kindness until his death, which happened, I believe, in 1825. Her feelings towards him were those of pure friendship, tinged by the memory of her youthful affections and stimulated by the fantastic notion that a secret bond irrevocably united his destiny with her own. After his death, she had him buried in her garden, and twice every day she visited his grave, decorated it with flowers, and remained by it absorbed in long reveries.
“General Loustannau’s insanity became more intense after his son’s death, his delusions being greatly augmented by his intercourse with Lady Hester Stanhope. Celestial music floated round him; for a while he believed himself called to give battle to Bonaparte, who, he said, had returned to the earth under the form of Antichrist; and in 1831 he declared it his destiny to become king of Jerusalem when the fulness of time
should have been accomplished. He had now warm altercations with Lady Hester; for he asserted his right to the bay mare with the natural saddle, whilst her ladyship was to have the white mare, and to ride with him into the Holy City as his wife, her place being at his left-hand and a little behind him.