Ten thousand thanks for your kind recipe for my eyes. I have not had a moment’s time to bestow a thought upon myself since I received it.
Dear Lord Frederick![16] what changes have taken place in my situation since I saw him last! but I am too much of a Turk to complain of the decrees of Heaven.
I forgot to mention that there is a plague at Sayda. Most of the people are shut up; and, although I must have suffered cruelly from the malady formerly, I am in no apprehension concerning it, as I am a perfect predestinarian. Happy for me that I have inspired the same feelings into all those who surround me.
If it please God that I, like Joseph, should come safe out of the well, I hope it will be needless to assure you that, whatever part of your family might fall in my way, my greatest pleasure would be to endeavour to make them, by every service and attention, the evidence of the respect and regard which I bear you.
H. L. Stanhope.
PS. Long before you can receive this letter, this business must be settled. Depend upon it, I shall be a match for them. I shall trouble you to give Dr. —— the information contained in this letter, begging him to guard complete silence on everything that relates to this country or elsewhere; for things are in an unpleasant state both here and at Cyprus.
Some time in the spring, but the exact day is not noted, I received the following letter from Lady Hester Stanhope:—
Djoun, Nov. 9, 1827.
I have not heard from or written to you for eight months. My three letters, composing one, must have reached you. I have not made my intended journey, for I have been, during three months of this summer, absolutely as if in prison. The representatives of the John Bulls in this country having impressed the Emir Beshýr with the assurance that I had not a friend in the world, he proceeded upon unheard-of outrages towards me; and, if he did not actually put my life in danger, he had it publicly cried,[17] that whoever served me should be bastinadoed and amerced.