This leads me to say a word on the extraordinary hatred that Lady Hester Stanhope bore to her own sex, although from what cause I do not know: but during her travels and her residence on Mount Lebanon, in all the visits she received from persons of whatever condition, their wives, if travelling with them, seldom or never obtained access. She professed a general dislike to women, and said she had never known but three, among the hundreds she had been acquainted with, of whom she could speak with unreserved admiration. Hence it was that she considered married men as necessarily miserable, and how often did she quote Sir —— ——’s case to illustrate her views. That same evening she reproached me for yielding to the idle fears of a woman, and painted very ridiculous and amusing pictures of the henpecked husbands she had known in her time, of whom the most prominent was Lord ——, and the most suffering, the baronet alluded to above. In conclusion, she told me she should write an answer to Ahmed Bey, telling him I was governed by my wife, and could not come.

It was customary for her to send over to the village every morning a servant and horse to fetch me; but on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of January he did not come; and I very well knew that some explosion of anger would take place on her part: it being an unpardonable thing in her eyes for any living being to oppose her purposes, and much more for a woman to do so. In the evening of the 28th, her factotum, the bailiff, came with a message, requesting to know whether I had overcome Mrs. ——’s scruples, and, if not, desiring I would certify it in writing. Accordingly, I wrote a letter, in which I justified my own refusal to go to Damascus, on the ground that Mrs. —— was totally new to the country; had no soul to talk to; had, in compliance with Lady Hester’s wishes, brought no maid-servant who could understand her; and that I could not find it right to leave her, much as I regretted the disappointment and vexation that such a step caused her ladyship, and her friend and mine, Ahmed Bey.

February 3, 1831.—I heard no more of Lady Hester until this day, when the horse was sent, and, on entering her saloon, a stormy altercation took place between us, in the presence of her secretary. The final result was, that I signified my wish, as soon as I had done what I could for her, to take my family back again to Europe, regretting I had come so far to so little purpose. “I have given,” said she, “a good deal of advice to many persons in whom I have taken an interest, and you are the last of my disciples whom I thought I could make something of: but it is like cutting the hair off the legs of half-bred horses; it grows again, and you may often get a kick in the face for your pains. You know what a good opinion they had of you in this country, which I kept up; but your conduct now has spoiled all: for when a man gives his beard to a woman it is all over with him. Remember my words, and write them down.”

But she was not to be so easily foiled. She returned to the charge, and again urged me to undertake the journey to Damascus. She called my attention to the words of Ahmed Bey’s letter, describing Hassan Effendi’s malady: “His chest is without pain, and so is his throat, and the complaint seems to be in his mouth.” These expressions she interpreted as a clear indication that this great man was somebody who had a communication to make to her, which was of too much importance to be trusted to a letter, and that that was what was meant by the “complaint in the mouth.” Anxious, therefore, to know what this secret business was, she thought neither of the state of the weather (for the snow was lying deep on the upper chain of Mount Lebanon, over which the road to Damascus lay), nor of the complete loneliness in which my family would be left. It is true that, in another cottage in the village, Mr. Chasseaud and his wife lived, and they had shown every disposition in their power to enliven Mrs. ——’s solitude; but this was the rainy season, and there were days when it was impossible to get from house to house, owing to the violence of the wind and the torrents of water that fell from the heavens: and, when the rain abated, the mud, mixed with dung of cattle, so completely filled the paths, that it was impossible to walk five steps.

That there was cause for apprehension, when left alone, may be seen from what had occurred on the 24th of January. It rained heavily, and I was sitting writing in the evening, when the black slave told me that about two hundred soldiers had halted for the night in the village, on their way to join Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, who was besieging the castle of Nablôos, where the inhabitants were in a state of insurrection, brought on by the arbitrary exactions of the local government. In those days, soldiers in villages often committed many excesses. We had no bolt to our front door, nor any fastening but a hook to the window-shutters. About nine in the evening, the following note was brought me by Mr. Chasseaud’s servant:

“Dear Dr. ——,

“We have a great many troops this evening in the village, and some of them very cut-throat-looking fellows. I am well armed, and do not care for them. You would not do wrong to be also on your guard.

“Yours truly,

“J. Chasseaud.”

But I had no arms, excepting my fowling-piece, which was nailed down in a case that I had not yet had time to open; so, putting my reliance on the respect which the name of Lady Hester Stanhope obtained for those belonging to her establishment, and on the heavy rains, I wrote on, not altogether free from alarm, when, sometimes, the blasts of wind shook the door and window-shutters, and made me uncertain whether the noise I heard was that of the elements or of man.