March 7.—This being Wednesday, Lady Hester, as usual, was invisible. What she did on these mysterious days I never heard: for a person once away from her might as well divine how the man in the moon was employed as guess how she was passing her time.
Thursday, March 8.—I saw Lady Hester about four o’clock: she was in a very irritable state: she complained bitterly, as usual, of her servants—of their neglect, ignorance, and heartlessness: she said she would rather be surrounded by robbers; for there is some principle amongst thieves. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “that I could find one human being who knew his Creator!”
She went on:—“I have had a very bad night, and whether I shall live or die, I don’t know: but this I tell you beforehand, that, if I do die, I wish to be buried, like a dog, in a bit of earth just big enough to hold this miserable skin, or else to be burnt, or thrown into the sea. And, as I am no longer an English subject, no consuls, nor any English of any sort, shall approach me in my last moments; for, if they do, I will have them shot. Therefore, the day before I die, if I know it, I shall order you away, and not only you, but everything English; and if you don’t go, I warn you beforehand, you must take the consequences. Let me be scorched by the burning sun[36]—frozen by the cold blast—let my ashes fly in the air—let the wolves and jackals devour my carcase;—let”—here the agitation she was in, and which had kept increasing, brought on a severe fit of coughing, and it was a quarter of an hour before she could recover strength enough to speak again. Her exhaustion reduced her to a little calm.
After dinner I saw her again, but now her irritability had passed away. “Take your chair,” said she, “here by the bed—turn your back to the window to save your poor eyes from the light—never mind me: there—I am afraid I have overworked them by so much writing. But I know, if you did not write for me, you would be writing or reading for yourself: you are just like my sister Griselda.”
She went on:—“You are angry with me, I dare say, because I told you I would not have you near me when I am dying: but I suppose I may do as I please. No English consul shall touch me or my effects: no: when I was going, sooner than that, I will call in all the thieves and robbers I can find, and set them to plunder and destroy everything. But I shall not die so:—I shall die as St. Elias and Isaac did; and, before that, I shall have to wade through blood up to here” (and she drew her hand across her neck), “nor will a spark of commiseration move me. The bab el tobi [gate of pardon] will then be shut; for neither king, nor priest, nor peasant, shall enter when that hour comes. You and others will then repent of not having listened to my words.”
Saturday, March 10.—Let us take this night as a sample of many others, to show sometimes what was doing in a solitary residence on Mount Lebanon, in which the vivid fancies of European writers had conjured up an imaginary mode of existence wholly different from the sad reality. From eight o’clock at night until one in the morning, Lady Hester Stanhope had kept the house in commotion, upon matters which would seem so foreign to her rank, her fortune, and her supposed occupations, that, when enumerated, they will hardly be believed. First, there was a deliberation of half an hour to decide whether it would be best to send the mules on the next day or the day after for wheat: then several servants were to be questioned, one after another, in order to compare their conflicting testimony, whether her fields of barley had come up, and how high, and what crops they promised; next, whether the oranges, now fit to be gathered, should be put under the gardener’s care, or into a store-room in the house. Then ensued a conversation with me, whether Fatôom was not playing some deep game in pretending to be separated from her husband; and so on, with a score of other topics equally unimportant, but with all of which she worried herself so effectively, that it seemed as if she wilfully sought refuge in such petty annoyances, for the sake of escaping from secret heart-burnings, which she did not choose to betray. In this way she had the secretary called up twice from his bed, and the bailiff once, keeping the rest of the servants in continual motion, whilst I was obliged, in civility, to sit and listen to it all.
Old Pierre had been sent for from Dayr el Kamar. As a person who figures occasionally in these domestic scenes, I must make the reader a little acquainted with his history. In the year 1812, when Lady Hester was travelling from Jerusalem along the coast towards Damascus, we reached Dayr el Kamar, where Pierre came and offered himself to me as a servant. I took him; but his various talents as a cook, a guide, and an interpreter, and most of all as an adventurer, who had an extraordinary fund of anecdotes to relate, soon brought him into notice with Lady Hester, and she asked him of me for her own service. He accompanied us to Palmyra and through different parts of Syria, resided with her at Latakia and Mar Elias, and remained in her service many years. Having amassed a little money, he obtained permission to retire to Dayr el Kamar, where he kept a cook’s-shop, or, if you will, a tavern.
But Lady Hester never lost sight of him. From time to time, when any traveller left her house to traverse Mount Lebanon, or to journey to Damascus and Aleppo, or even to Palmyra, Pierre was recommended as interpreter and guide, and, I understand, always discharged his duties to the satisfaction of his employers. He is known to many Englishmen, among the rest to the Rev. Mr. Way, who seems to have been very good to him; and Pierre, on his side, retains a most grateful remembrance of that gentleman’s bounty.
Pierre springs from a good family, by the name of Marquis or Marquise, originally of Marseilles, and afterwards established as merchants in Syria. When he was a boy, he accompanied an uncle to France, who took him to Paris. The uncle wore the Levantine dress; and, having some business to transact connected with government, was on one occasion summoned to Versailles, where the court was. Chance or design threw Pierre in the way of the king, Louis XVI., who talked to him about the Levant, as did also Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. Of this conversation Pierre never failed to make considerable boast.
On his return to Syria, Pierre lived with his relations, until Buonaparte laid siege to Acre, where his knowledge of the French language recommended him to the notice of that general. He bore a commission in his army; and, on the retreat of the French into Egypt, accompanied them, and remained there until the final evacuation, when he obtained a pension; but of which, he declared, he had never touched a sou, in consequence of residing abroad.