Mons. Urbain, a contributor to the Temps, happening to meet with Pierre when he was travelling in Syria, was so highly diverted with his anecdotes, that, on his return to France, he wrote no less than three feuilletons, or notices on Le Vieux Pierre; at least, so I was informed by Monsieur Guys.
Pierre had been sent for by Lady Hester Stanhope, and she assigned him a room close to the doors of her own quadrangle, that he might be always within call. Pierre was a man exceedingly thin, with an aquiline nose, and a steady eye, full of gasconade to be mistaken for courage, wonderfully loquacious, and deeply imbued with all the mystic doctrines that Lady Hester sometimes preached about. But Pierre’s chief merit lay in his star, which, she assured me, was so propitious to her, that it could calm her convulsions, and lay her to sleep, when books, narcotics, and everything else failed.
Glancing in these desultory memorials from one person to another, I may here mention, that one of the maids, named Sâady, incurred the particular aversion of Lady Hester, just as strongly as Pierre was favoured with her partiality. Poor Sâady never entered her presence without being saluted by some epithet of disgust or opprobium: yet Sâady worked from morning till night, and seldom got to bed until three, four, or five o’clock in the morning. But Lady Hester insisted on the necessity of treating her servants in this way for the purpose of keeping them on the alert; and she would frequently quote her grandfather’s example to prove how powerful particular aversions were in people of exalted minds—such as hers and his. In this way she kept herself in a state of constant irritation, as if she were determined obstinately to oppose the inroads of disease by increased exertion, exactly in proportion as her physical strength became more and more weakened and reduced.
Monday, March 12.—Two servant boys were flogged by Logmagi for having quitted the courtyard both at the same time, when one at least was wanted to carry messages from the inner to the outer courts. These punishments were inflicted by making the delinquent lie at his full length flat on the ground, his head being held by one servant, and his feet by another while the stripes were administered. My disposition revolted at these whippings; although perhaps they were necessary, as Lady Hester said. The servants would not have borne them, but that they had in fact no choice, knowing well that they must either remain and be flogged, or be sent to the Nizàm, where they would be flogged twice as much, with the risk of being killed to boot.
Wednesday, March 14.—Lady Hester was in very low spirits this evening, and, as night advanced, she had a paroxysm of grief, which quite terrified me. With a ghastly and frenzied look, she kept crying until my heart was rent with her wretchedness. When I left her for the night, although she was somewhat composed, her image haunted me, even when sleep had closed my eyes.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] No dependant stands before his superior in the East without covering his hands with his robe or with the hanging sleeves customary among Orientals. In sitting, the feet and legs are likewise hidden; at least, so good-breeding requires, and persons alone who are on terms of familiarity would thrust them out, or let them hang pendent.
[35] In the cottages of Mount Lebanon there are many things occurring daily which would greatly surprise an English practitioner. A luxation of the shoulder-joint in an infant, real or supposed, was cured, they told me, by taking the child by the wrist and swinging it round with its feet off the ground, until the bone got into place again. I assisted, for the second time, at the cure of a sore throat, in a man thirty-six years of age, who suffered a pocket-handkerchief to be drawn tightly round his neck until his face turned black and he was half strangled. The man declared the next day he was well, and the operator assured me it was a never-failing remedy.
“Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis