Lady Hester, after relating this to me, thus proceeded: “The beast, as I spoke to him, was so terrified, doctor, that he trembled like an aspen leaf, and I could have knocked him down with a feather. The man told the Emir Beshýr my answer; for there was a tailor at work in the next room, who saw and heard him, and spoke of it afterwards. The Emir puffed such a puff of smoke out of his pipe when my message was delivered—and then got up and walked out.
“Why, what did Hamâady[34] say to the Emir, when he was deliberating how he should get rid of me?—‘You had better have nothing to do with her. Fair or foul means, it is all alike to her. She has been so flattered in her lifetime, that no praise can turn her head. Money she thinks no more of than dirt; and as for fear, she does not know what it is. As for me, your Highness, I wash my hands of her.’
“Oh, doctor, if you were to feel the bump behind my ear, it is bigger than any thing you ever saw! And they say of the lions, that the more their ears are buried in bone the bolder they are. Why, at the time I am speaking of, there were five hundred horsemen about in the neighbouring villages, and they killed three men, one between the house and the village, one at the back of my premises, and one other farther off, just to let me know what they could do, thinking to terrify me; but I showed them I was not to be frightened. I always slept with a khanjàr” (a poniard) “by my side, and slept as sound as a top. Poor Williams was terrified out of her senses: she used to get up in the night and come to me. Why do I keep Seyd Ahmed but on account of his courage? because, in these dangerous times, you must have servants of all sorts. I remember when I and Miss Williams were left without a farthing of money, and the Emir had surrounded the house with the intention of murdering us, that Seyd Ahmed remained at his post, when all the rest were so frightened they did not know what they did; and we had nothing to eat too, but he never complained. Once, when we were at Abra, all the black slaves formed a plot to run away in the night to Sayda, which they executed. I had rung my bell several times, and, as nobody answered it, I went out to look, thinking they were all asleep, for it was two in the morning. Not a soul was to be found except the little black boy. I awoke Seyd Ahmed, called Miss Williams; and, although Seyd Ahmed was in a terrible fury, and wanted to set off in search of them in the middle of the night, I would not let him: for I thought it was a plot of the Emir’s to get the men out of the house, and then to have us murdered. But all these matters never disturbed my equanimity—I was as collected as I am now.”
Once some camels, that Lady Hester had sent with a load to a neighbouring seaport, were returning light, when some persons, who were employed by the Emir Beshýr, and who were accustomed to see the richest individuals of the province eager to embrace any opportunity of obliging him, thinking that she would be delighted that her camel-drivers should have rendered any assistance to their prince, stopped the camels, and loaded them with marble slabs, that were intended for the floor of a part of the Emir’s new palace, then building. These the drivers were ordered to deposit on Lady Hester’s premises, where they would be sent for. As soon as she heard that the slabs were lying near her porter’s lodge, she went out, and had them broken to pieces. “You may guess,” said she, when she told the story, “what a face the Prince made when this was related to him.”
There was a man, named Girius Baz, who was prime-minister to the Emir Beshýr; and, being an ambitious man, who sold his services to the injury of his master, he was strangled by him, and his goods and property, as far as they could be come at, were confiscated. The widow was left in poverty and destitution, as it was generally believed; and Lady Hester, having one day desired me to give two hundred piasters to her son, a lad, who had come begging in a genteel way, told me the following story:—
“That son,” said she, “was about eight or ten years old when his father was killed, and, since he has grown up, he maintains his mother by weaving. To succour this distressed family was a dangerous business with a man so cruel and jealous as the Emir; but I did it. One day, I asked one of the Emir’s officers why his master had so little compassion on Baz’s widow! ‘Because,’ answered the officer, ‘she goes about, saying she does not like the Emir.’—‘Like him!’ said I; ‘how can she like the man who murdered her husband? If she said she liked the Emir, it must be a lie, and therefore she only speaks the truth. Why did the Emir put it out of her power to like him?’—‘Because,’ replied the officer, ‘the minister became more powerful than his master, and then it was necessary to get rid of him.’—‘If he was too powerful,’ resumed I, ‘it was the Emir’s fault: he should have kept him under.’—‘But he could not,’ retorted the man.—‘Then, by your own confession,’ continued I, ‘he rode on the Emir’s shoulders; but that was no reason why he should have had him killed in a——.’—‘He was not killed in a——,’ interrupted the officer; ‘he was only seized there, and afterwards killed in his room.’—This was precisely what I wanted to get out,” added Lady Hester; “I made the man confess that the Emir had murdered Girius Baz, and it was of no consequence to me when, how, or where.
“Poor woman!” cried Lady Hester, after a pause, returning to the widow’s case, “I once had her for four months with me here, but she was so overwhelming in her gratitude and thanks, and kept so constantly about me, to attend upon me, that I was obliged to send her home again. Would you think it, that even in this case the sufferers proved themselves almost as bad as the tyrant! for this very woman carried on the farce of abject poverty for two years, and, at the end of that time, all of a sudden, appeared the diamonds, shawls, and money, she had hitherto concealed; in fact, she turned out almost as rich as I was myself. There is no believing a word you hear from any of them. Even Gondolfi[35] assured me that, in all his life, and in no other country, had he seen a people so full of lying, theft, and all kinds of vice as these are; and this, to crown all, is what he said of the Emir himself:—‘I have known him,’ said he, ‘twenty years, and never was there a more heartless, cruel man. I took an opportunity of talking to him in private, after he had put out his nephews’ eyes, and told him what an execrable thing it was. He beat his breast, and professed such repentance for what he had done, that I was quite moved, and thought to myself, perhaps the man acted from what he considered necessity, and that surely he would be more humane in future. But, soon after, I heard of the murder of Girius Baz, and of half a dozen more enormities, and I felt persuaded that his hypocrisy was as great as his cruelty.’
“You are shocked,” continued Lady Hester, “and say you are sick at your stomach from hearing of the atrocities of Ibrahim Pasha’s governors in getting recruits. Oh, they are nothing to what the Emir Beshýr has done in his time! Think of women’s breasts squeezed in a vice; of men’s heads screwed into a tourniquet until their temple-bones were driven in; of eyes put out with red-hot saucers; and a hundred other barbarities, worse than any you ever heard of! Wasn’t it extraordinary, that the same day that I sent the Emir’s man away with such a message to his master, one of the house-dogs pupped, and one of the puppies was blind?—not blind, as puppies usually are, but with his eyes burnt out, just as if they had been seared with a red-hot iron. I said to the man, ‘The demon of your Prince has entered the very dogs.’ The man almost fainted away before I had done with him, for I was not afraid of them; and even now, weak as I am, I do believe I could strangle the strongest of them.
“The Emir Beshýr has duped everybody. He duped the Pasha with the Sultan, and duped the Sultan with the Pasha. He cheats the English, cheats the French, and cheats all round. There is not a greater hypocrite on the face of the earth; and, although he sends his compliments to me by every traveller that passes, he is only waiting to see what turn matters will take, to fall on me, if he can; and, if he cannot, to lie and cringe, until a safer opportunity occurs of taking his revenge.
“You knew Aubin, the French navy surgeon, who had been a prisoner in the hulks at Portsmouth, and used to abuse the English so. Well, he was made the Emir’s doctor, because he procured him a ship to fly to Egypt in; the events on the mountain here succeeded each other so rapidly after your first leaving me! About 1820, Abdallah Pasha having hostile intentions against the Emir Beshýr and the Sheykh Beshýr, they both fled to the Horàn; and, after some time, when the Pasha pretended to be pacified, they both returned. Soon after that, the Emir, not being quite sure of what Abdallah Pasha meditated, thought it safest to fly a second time; and it was by the assistance of Monsieur Aubin that he embarked for Egypt, on board of a French merchant-vessel, commanded, I believe, by a Captain Allard. The Sheykh Beshýr, finding his former domineering rival fled, assumed the supreme authority in the mountain, and told the Emir Beshýr, by letter, that, if he ventured to return, he, the Sheykh, should be obliged to have him arrested, and sent prisoner to the Pasha.