for there were red roses blooming without the least care or notice.
No one now resides on any part of that hill.
The eccentric lady is buried in the garden, and in the same grave (we were assured) with Captain, son of General Loustaneau, a crazy French enthusiast who lived for above twenty-five years a pensioner on her bounty. The grave is covered with this simple stone monument, of a pattern very common in the country.
At the distance of a few yards is the monument over a former Moslem proprietor of the house.
Lady Hester died in June 1839, lonely and
miserable, and so ended her wild dreams and fancied importance. During her long residence there she had meddled in local dissensions, patronising the Jonblâts of Mokhtârah against the Ameer Besheer and the Egyptian invaders; she kept spies in the principal towns, as Acre and Saida, and had even supplied ammunition to the citadel of Acre for the Turks, but did not live to see the Egyptians ousted from the country.
There was good deal of exaggeration afloat at the time respecting her and some of her habits of life, though scarcely more extraordinary than the reality of other matters, as we are now able to judge of them; but at that period Syria and the Lebanon were very little understood in Europe, i.e., from 1823 to 1839. She was not so utterly removed from human society as is often supposed. She was not perched like an eagle on an inaccessible mountain, for there are villages near, besides the great Convent of Mokhallis, and she had constant communication with Saida for money and provisions.
The view around is indeed stern and cheerless in character, devoid of romantic accessories, without the rippling streams, the pines or the poplars of either Mokhtârah or Beteddeen; her hill like its neighbours was a lump of stone, with some scanty cultivation in the valley below, very little of this, and her small garden attached to the dwelling.
Before leaving this subject, I may as well state with respect to the common belief of Lady Hester being crowned Queen of Palmyra by the desert Arabs, that from information which I consider reliable this is all a mistake, or as it was expressed to me, a “French enthusiasm,” the truth being that in consequence of her lavish largesses among the wild people, they expressed their joy by acclamations in which they compared her to the “Queen of Sheba” who had come among them; and then by her flatterers, or those who were unskilled in the language, the term “Melekeh” (Queen) was interpreted as above: and as for a coronation the Arab tribes have no such a custom; the greatest chiefs, nay, even the kings of the settled Arabs, such as Mohammed and his successors, have never received such an inauguration.