The Delphic priestess—Abdallah Pasha’s ingratitude—His cowardice—Lady Hester’s spies—Her emaciation—History of General Loustaunau.
December 8.—A most violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning, kept me prisoner. The courtyards were flooded. When all the house was in confusion from the wet, and clogs were heard clattering on all sides, I entered Lady Hester’s room, and remained for about an hour, talking on indifferent subjects, without hearing from her one word in allusion to the state of the weather. At last she said, “Doctor, I find myself better from the thunder!” And when I replied that there were many persons who felt oppressed from an electric condition of the atmosphere and were relieved by its explosion, she observed, with some sharpness, “that I must be a great booby to make such a remark to her, as there was not a servant in the house who did not know that she could always tell, three days beforehand, when a thunder-storm was coming on.”
In the evening I sat with her about four hours. She was up, and had placed herself in a corner of her bed-room on a low ottoman (as it is called in England), which the Syrians name terâahah. The candle was put far back in the window recess, the light being thrown on my features, whilst it left hers in obscurity. This was her custom on almost all occasions, even when she had strangers visiting her, under pretence that she could not bear the light in her eyes, but, in fact, as I have reason to believe, to watch the play of people’s countenances.
She resumed the subject of the preceding evening. I was too weary when I left her, and too busy next morning, to be able to write down her conversation, but, could I have done it, it must have left a profound impression on the reader’s mind, an idea of sublimity, whether he held her visionary opinions to be the mere rhapsodies of a disordered intellect, or the deductions of great reasoning powers, aided by remarkable foresight. Her language was so forcible and sublime, that I sometimes suspended my breath, and from time to time tried to assure myself that I was not hearkening to a superhuman voice. The smoke from our pipes by degrees filled the room, closely shut up as it was, and cast a deep gloom around us. The wind howled without, with now and then occasional echoes of the thunder among the mountains: and it required no great stretch of imagination to believe one’s self listening to the inspired oracles of the Delphic priestess, as she poured forth the warnings of what seemed a preternatural insight into futurity.
December 9.—The morning was employed in writing letters, and in the evening I remained until half-past one with Lady Hester. She spoke of the alarm created in Mahomet Ali’s cabinet, by her affording protection to Abdallah Pasha’s people after the surrender of St. Jean d’Acre. “That impudent fellow C********,” said she, “sent me a packet of letters from Colonel Campbell, and told me I was to prepare a list of all the people in my house, giving their names, nation, a description of their persons, &c. I returned him the packet, and desired him to forward it to the quarter whence it came, adding, ‘These are all the commands that Lady Hester Stanhope has at present to give to Mr. C********.’ To Colonel C. I wrote ‘that it was not customary for consuls to give orders to their superiors; that, as for the English name, about which he talked so much, I made over to him all the advantage he might derive from it.’ And my letter to Boghoz was to the effect that, ‘in confessing, as he did, that I rendered the state of this country unsettled by my measures, he acknowledged the weakness of his master’s cause; that I disdained all partnership in it; and that the column on which Mahomet Ali’s exaltation rested would, before long, sink beneath him, and his greatness melt like snow before the fire.’ I added, ‘there could be little honour for Mahomet Ali to make himself a gladiator before a woman;’ and here I meant that, as a gladiator was some criminal who descended into the arena to fight, so he was a malefactor too.
“As for Abdallah Pasha, he was not worth the pains I took about him; but I did it for my master, the Sultan. I kept and maintained for two years two hundred of his people, wounded, sick, and proscribed; and when I wrote to him to know what I should do with them, as the expense was too great for me, the answer of this ungrateful wretch was to ask me for a loan of twenty-five purses, and not even to send his remembrance to one of those who had bled and suffered in his cause. His ingratitude, however, has partly met with its reward: for the Sultan himself has heard of his cold-hearted conduct, and has taken away half what he allowed him. This is the man whose head I saved by my intercession with a person in power.
“He was a coward, after all. The last day of the siege of Acre he lost his senses quite. As Ibrahim Pasha had effected a breach, some of Abdallah Pasha’s officers forced him to come upon the ramparts to encourage the soldiers; for he had remained during the whole time shut up in a vault under-ground with his women and boys, and had never once appeared. Well, the first thing he did was to sit down amidst the fire, quite bewildered. He then asked for an umbrella: then he called for some water; and, when they presented to him an ibryk[16] as being the only thing they had near at hand, not supposing that at such a moment he would mind what it was he drank from, he would not drink out of it?”
They fetched him a goblet, and he made them take it back, because it was a glass he drank sherbet out of, and not water. The very man who handed it to him told me the story. At last they placed him in one corner of the battery, and covered him with a cloak. All this time the bullets were flying about.[17]
Lady Hester continued:—“Of all those to whom I gave an asylum and bread, after the siege, I can’t say there were many who showed the least gratitude—four perhaps: the rest robbed me, and abused my goodness in every possible manner. One family alone consisted of seventeen persons. Will it be believed, that when I had new clothes made for the women for the Byrám holyday, they had the baseness to grumble at the stuff, the make, and everything, complaining they were not good enough for them? But this did not hurt me half so much as the little credit I get for everything I do among my relations and the English in general. My motives are misconstrued, or not appreciated; and, whilst a mighty fuss is made about some public subscription for people in Jamaica, Newfoundland, or God knows where, I, who, by my own individual exertions, have done the like for hundreds of wretched beings, driven out of their homes by the sabre and bayonet, am reviled and abused for every act of kindness or benevolence.
“I knew a pretty deal of what was going forward during the siege of Acre by my own spies. Hanah, your old servant—Giovanni, as he used to be called—was one of them. He carried on his trade of a barber, and was married in Acre; and, when the bombarding began, he got out somehow, and came to me. So I furnished him with a beggar’s dress. But first I made him take leave of the other servants, and set off from the door. Then, hiding himself under a rock, when he was at a distance, he dressed himself as a fakýr, and, so perfect was his disguise, that, when he came back to me, I did not know him. He was a poor timid fellow, and that was the reason why I chose him as fit for my purpose. In such a nice business as that, I wanted a man that would follow my instructions exactly, and do nothing out of his own head: and Giovanni was in such a fright, that I was sure of him in that respect. Well, he succeeded perfectly well. There was a poor devil of a sacca, or water-carrier, in the camp, who used to take water to Derwish Pasha’s tents. Meanly dressed, and with his head held down, like one in misery, nobody paid any attention to him; at night he would frequently creep between the ropes of the Pasha’s tent, and seem to sleep there like an unhappy being who had no hole to put his head in. Through a slit in the tent, he could see and hear much that passed, communicating whatever information he obtained to Giovanni, who brought it at convenient opportunities to me. But when I wanted a stout-hearted fellow to carry a letter through the entrenchments to the foot of the walls, to be drawn up, then I chose a different sort of a messenger; for I had them all ready.”