If the philosopher of chance should have presumed to have offered a little heterogeneous information to the learned, you, sir, must forgive me. Your star denotes you to be of admirable good taste and great perspicuity, and therefore well calculated to investigate the subjects I have had the honour to lay before you.
You will forgive me for having used the pen of another, but my sight and state of health will not at all times allow of my writing a long letter.
I salute all the philosophers with respect,
Hester Lucy Stanhope.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] See the History of the Temple of Jerusalem, translated from the Arabic by the Rev. Mr. Reynolds, p. 403.
[13] Heraclius?
CHAPTER V.
Rainy season—Lady Hester’s despondency—Her Turkish costume—Turkish servants—Terror inspired by Lady Hester in her servants—Visit of Messieurs Poujolat and Boutés—Lady Hester’s inability to entertain strangers—Her dejected spirits and bad health.
November 24.—Still rain, rain! The courtyards were deep in mud and puddles, and the men-servants walked about in wooden clogs, such as are worn in breweries. The flat roofs, which cover the houses in most parts of Syria, are made of a cement of mortar and fine gravel, in appearance like an asphaltum causeway. In the hot months fissures show themselves; and it rarely happens, when winter comes on, that, during the first heavy rains, the wet does not filter through. Lady Hester, therefore, had to suffer, as well as all the house, from this annoyance, hardly bearable when a person is in health, but extremely distressing and even dangerous in sickness. For some days past pans had been standing on the bedroom floor to catch the droppings, and it continued to rain on. The sloppy communications from door to door, where every door opens into a courtyard, gave likewise a damp to the apartments only supportable in a climate as mild as that of Syria. Snow had covered the upper chain of Mount Lebanon in great abundance, and the wind blew furiously. Everybody was out of humour, and many of the servants were labouring under bad coughs and colds: but the women, notwithstanding, always moved about the house with naked feet. It was a wonder to see how, with coughs that might be heard from one courtyard to another, they constantly went barefoot, and yet got well; and a servant, if sent to the village, was sure to leave his shoes at the porter’s lodge, and, drawing his sherwáls or trousers up above his knees, to set off as light as a deer through the pelting storm, careless of wet, if he could but cover his head.
I saw Lady Hester about two in the day: she was in low spirits, lying in her bed with the window and door open from a sense of suffocation which had just before seized her.