There is a large stone edifice of great extent, distant about three-quarters of a mile, as the crow flies, from the village of Jôon, more like a fortress than the peaceable habitation of cenobites. It is the monastery of Dayr el Mkhallas, or the Saviour, and contains about fifty friars of the Greek Catholic church, which repudiates the pope, recognizing as its spiritual head its own patriarch. M. Guys enjoyed the unlimited confidence of these people as the well-tried and efficient friend of the Catholic church throughout Syria; and it was no sooner known that he was in the neighbourhood, than the superior of the monastery gave him to understand that a visit from him would be received as a great honour by the monks. M. Guys devoted the morning to this gratifying object, and his reception was in the highest degree flattering. When he arrived at the foot of the Mount, on the summit of which the monastery stands, he was saluted by a merry chime of church-bells, and then the whole body of the friars, with the cross borne before them, came out in procession to meet him. The greatest ceremony was observed on the occasion, and sherbet, coffee, pipes, aspersion of rose-water, and homage, were lavished on him, not less in the hope of securing a continuation of his good offices, than as expressive of gratitude for past kindnesses: for no man holding official rank in Syria has ever enjoyed more popularity, or obtained more general consideration, than the Chevalier Guys. Descended from an ancient family of Provence, in which the consular rank may be almost said to have become hereditary, the Levant saw, at the beginning of the present century, the rare occurrence of three brothers holding consulships at the same time.
After dinner, M. Guys was summoned by Lady Hester Stanhope, and I availed myself of the opportunity it afforded me of remaining at home for the evening. The next morning he departed before I was up; but, being anxious to ascertain his opinions of Lady Hester’s situation, I mounted my horse, and, by taking a short but somewhat dangerous path down the mountains, I overtook him. Nothing particular, however, had transpired in their conversation, which lasted for four hours; but he told me that he was shocked to find her so much altered, and that he had never heard such a hollow sepulchral cough. He added that, frequently during the time he was with her, she fell back on the sofa from exhaustion. She spoke, too, a good deal, and in rather an odd way, of extraordinary sights she had seen, of two apparitions that had appeared to her, and of serpents near Tarsûs, which go in troops devouring all before them, and with a tone of conviction as if she believed it all. “What does it mean,” he asked me—“and why do you let her smoke so much?”
March 2.—Lady Hester was now getting better slowly, but, as usual, her strength no sooner began to return than it brought out all the unmanageable points of her character in full relief. Something happened in the house which ruffled her, and produced a discussion between us, I hardly know how; but it ended by her calling me a crabbed old fool: upon which I observed, that I never heard such expressions from the lips of ladies before. This set her off upon her inexhaustible theme of fearless speaking. “If you were a duke,” said she, “I would use exactly the same expressions.”—“Your ladyship’s talents,” I ventured to observe again, “are inexpressibly great, but, without questioning that, I only lament the intemperate use of them.” Taking up this observation, she dwelt at great length upon the “sweetness of her temper,” and I made my peace at last, by saying that a physician should be the last person to complain of the irritability of his patients. Apophthegms of this submissive character were never lost upon her, provided they were true, as well as apologetic; so pipes were ordered, and we entered into an armistice for the rest of the evening.
A curious but characteristic incident occurred about this time. In the ravines of the mountains, where the few living creatures that are to be found may be supposed to be drawn into closer communion by a common sense of loneliness, a shepherd named Câasem, who was nearly fifty years old, formed a liaison with a village girl, whose occupation consisted in leading a cow about in the solitary green nooks where any scanty herbage was to be secured. The circumstance reached Lady Hester’s ears before it was known to anybody else, and she immediately ordered the man to be flogged at break of day, with instructions that nobody should tell him why or wherefore. “He will know what it is for,” she exclaimed; then turning reproachfully to Logmagi, to whom the execution of the order was entrusted, she added:—“How is it you leave me to be the first to discover these disgraceful acts, giving the Emir Beshýr an excuse to say that I encourage depravity in my servants, when it is your duty to know everything that passes about my premises?” Logmagi went, gave the shepherd a beating, and sent him about his business. Lady Hester used to justify severities of this description on the ground that it prevented the recurrence of similar licentiousness, and “kept the fellows in order.”
March 5.—This being the vigil of the Korbàn Byràm, or the Mahometan Easter, which is their great holyday, Lady Hester, who had previously given her orders to a person who had some reputation as a pastrycook, despatched at twelve at night three servants, each with a sennýah, or round tray, on which they were to bring back from Sayda by daylight the baklâawy, mamool, and karýby, three delicious sorts of sweet cakes, which are scarcely exceeded in delicacy by the choicest pastry of Europe.
At noon, the servants, dressed in all their new finery, sat down to a copious dinner composed of the most luxurious Eastern dishes. But there was no wine; for, whatever transgressions these people may commit in that way in private, they never touch wine in public. Logmagi and some others were known not to be much troubled with such scruples, when they could indulge themselves in secret: but Logmagi always excused himself on the score of being a Freemason, which is held in Turkey to be equivalent to a jovial fellow who does not care much what he does. The women, also, had their own feast, and a piece of gold the value of twenty piasters was presented to each of the servants. The day was literally abandoned to pleasure; but what a contrast do the sober manners of Mahometans form to those of Europeans? Gambling and noisy revels are out of the question in the tranquil and easy delights in this simple race. Dancing is generally confined to the boys, or to some buffoon who gets up and wriggles about to the music of a small tambourine, beaten with a single stick and producing a dull sound, which they consider musical, and which habit renders not disagreeable even to European ears. Every man smokes his pipe; and a good story-teller (for such a one is rarely wanting in a party of a dozen,) relates some traditionary tale, which absorbs for the time all the faculties of his hearers. The cook was one of this sort, a Christian of the village of Abra, a shrewd fellow, who went by the name of Dyk, or the Cock, from his rather strutting air, or from the vigorous exercise of his authority over his wife, whom he beat every now and then to keep her in proper discipline—a redeeming quality in the eyes of Lady Hester, who otherwise would have dismissed him from her service.
Lady Hester’s astrological powers were put to a practical test to-day. Fatôom, one of her maid servants, whose name has frequently occurred in these pages, required my medical services, under the following circumstances. About six years before, having, in league with Zeyneb, a black girl, and some men of the village, robbed her mistress of several valuable effects, she was turned away: but, upon exhibiting great repentance, she was taken back again. Lady Hester found no difficulty, as may be supposed, in extracting from her a confession of the system of plunder that had been carried on, and the names of her accomplices. “I could hang them all,” was her constant expression in speaking of them. Fatôom had been in her ladyship’s service ten or eleven years, and was not yet twenty; and, being very pretty, and decked out in the finery to which she was enabled to help herself by her share of the plunder, she had vanity enough, when she was turned away, to hope that she should get at least an aga for a husband: but she was disappointed, and was obliged to put up with a small farmer. She consequently came back a married woman, in poor plight as to circumstances, with the prospect of having her difficulties aggravated by a speedy increase to her cares. On this day, 5th March, Fatôom complained of pains. There was not a moment to be lost: the midwife was instantly sent for; Fatôom was hurried away to her mother’s in the village, and, before the expiration of a quarter of an hour, she gave birth to a boy.
As soon as Lady Hester learned the result, she requested me to go and see her. I found Fatôom sitting on a mattress on the floor (for nobody in the East has a bedstead) with from fifteen to twenty women squatted around her, the midwife supporting her back, and the child lying by her, covered with a corner of the quilt. Fatôom, very yellow, looked as if she had been in a great fright, and was astonished there was so little in it. After feeling her pulse, and delivering to her mother a basket of good things, such as lump sugar, six or eight sorts of spices, &c., with which it is customary to make the caudle upon these occasions, as also a new counterpane, and two silk pillows, for her lying-in present, I took a glance at the village gossips. There they were, holding forth much in the same way as the peasantry in other countries, with this difference, that here my presence was no restraint, and the minutest details of the recent event were discussed with as little reserve as if they had been talking of the ordinary incidents of the day.
Having returned to Lady Hester with an account of what I had seen, she immediately set about casting the infant’s nativity, first ascertaining accurately the hour at which he was born—a quarter before two. “He will have,” said she, “arched eyebrows, rolling eyes, and a nose so and so: he will be a devil, violent in his passions, but soon pacified: his fingers will be long and taper, without being skinny and bony:” and thus she went on, in a manner so impressed with faith and earnestness, that it is not to be wondered at how persons of good judgment have lent their ears to astrologers, where the study has been fortified by a previous knowledge of man, his temperaments, and the innate and external characteristics of passions, of virtue, and of vice. She gave him the name of Selim, and sent word to say his star agreed with hers very well. This was good news for Fatôom, as it was equivalent to Lady Hester’s taking charge of the infant.
The cradle had already been prepared: it was of wood, painted green, something like a trough, and perforated at the bottom, as is usual in the East. A tube of wood with a bowl to it, exactly of the form of a tobacco-pipe, is tied to the child’s waist, a rude but ingenious contrivance to save trouble to the nurse, the bowl serving as the immediate recipient, and the tube passing through the side of the cradle.[35]