The prince sent Count Tattenbach to ask me to come and sit with him in the evening. His Abyssinian slave was at one end of the divan and he at the other. She appeared to be about seventeen, had regular features, and, as well as I could see by candlelight, where bronze features are rather indistinct, was, on the whole, a handsome girl. She was called Mahbôoby (Aimée). “Poor thing!” thought I, “the position to which you are raised would be envied by many a European fine woman, and to you it brings nothing but ennui. Your lord may adore you—perhaps does; but he cannot say five words to you in any language that you understand, although he speaks several with great purity; and every action of his life is contrary to the usages in which you have been brought up. Happier far would have been your lot, had your purchaser been some Turkish aga, or some shopkeeper, who, in making you mistress of a small household, would have found you employment conformable to your habits, and have left you to the natural and domestic occupations to which you have been accustomed: he would have placed you where your position, lawful in the eyes of your neighbours, would have been an honour to you, instead of its being, where you will go, a matter of scandal and reproach. Time, however, may bring you acquainted with some language in which you and your master may exchange ideas, education may ripen them, and then, perhaps, you will have acquired tastes congenial to his, and the tie that unites you may be strengthened by something more lasting than at present.”
Whilst the conversation was going on, Mahbôoby fell asleep, and forgot for a time her greatness and her troubles. The little negress, about twelve years old, dressed as a boy, sat in a corner of the room, and was remarkable for her air, at once sprightly without being vulgar. The prince was summoned to go to Lady Hester. Our rising awoke the Abyssinian girl, and hardly were we out of the room when I heard their two tongues running glibly, as if relieved from the constraint which his presence and mine had put on them.
In the course of the day, he had taken the Abyssinian into Lady Hester’s garden to walk. I was in the saloon at the time with her ladyship, the windows of which looked into the garden. Zezefôon, who knew what a sacred place the garden was held, and who was jealous that a slave like herself should be acting the mistress where she was a menial, came in a hurry to say that the prince and Mahbôoby were in the garden. Lady Hester grew fidgety immediately at this intrusion on her privacy, so little in accordance with her exclusive principles. “I can’t bear,” said she, “that anybody should be hanging about me in that manner; perhaps he may come in here as he goes past the door. It will not do; I must have my place to myself, if it is no bigger than a barn, and no better—no matter, so as nobody comes there but when I send for him: tell him, doctor, that I can’t bear it.” I observed that, to a man of his rank, it would seem rude for such a prohibition to come from me. “Well,” said she, “I will tell him myself; but there is one thing I wish you to say to him for me, for that I can’t say myself. You know he will be writing all about me; and, although I do not care what he says of my temper, understanding, doings, and all that, I shouldn’t like him to say anything about my person, either as to my looks, figure, face, or appearance: it will be better for him merely to write that he had nothing to observe about my personal appearance, as there were few people in society but might recollect what I was, and to dwell on the looks of a sick woman could have nothing very pleasing in it.”
In the mean time, Lady Hester saw the prince twice a day, once before dinner, and afterward in the evening, when he generally remained until a late hour. I could observe she already began to obtain an ascendency over him, such as she never failed to do over those who came within the sphere of her attraction: for he was less lofty in his manner than he had been at first, and she seemed to have gained a step in height, and to be disposed to play the queen more than ever.
Woe to him who dared to show pretensions equal to hers! she would drive him from stronghold to stronghold, until he must capitulate upon any terms. The count at first had accompanied the prince in his interviews, but she gradually contrived to get rid of him in a certain degree, under the plea that his ill health and his wound would not be benefitted by sitting up: as she made it a rule, if possible, never to see more than one person at a time. She would say, “Do you suppose people will talk with freedom when any one is by?—and, besides, it distracts attention, first turning to one and then to another.”
An incident of some interest occurred about this time: Mahbôoby was conducted to Lady Hester by the prince to have her star read, and this is what her ladyship said to me afterwards on that subject: “I told you, doctor, there were two sorts of Abyssinians, one with Greek features, the other of the pug breed: Mahbôoby is not of the first class, but of the last. She will be good-tempered, faithful, and obedient: should the prince be ill, I’ll venture to say she will sit by him to guard him, and watch over him without sleeping for months together: but she will never do for a housekeeper, never for a mistress; she will learn nothing. Her awkward gait, her roll in the fashion of the felláhs, and all that, are habits she will not easily get rid of. What the prince should have done was to have placed her for a year or two in a family at Cairo, where French was spoken, or Italian, and there, with another to wait on her, when she had acquired the language, he should have taken her to himself, and have sold or given away the other; but I question whether servants in Germany will wait on her. He bought her from a Frenchman, who had purchased some slaves on speculation to sell them. There were two others; but he saw they were devils; and, not wishing to have the trouble of putting up with a bad temper, or of putting it down, he took the one he thought good-natured. She is horribly dressed, but she is well made. It is a thing that will not last.”
During the morning, Count Tattenbach gave me the relation of a long illness which he had undergone in the neighbourhood of that unhealthy spot, Sparta: it was a malignant fever. Such fevers are the curse of those otherwise happy climates: for let not the native of a cold country, like England, when he reads the flowery description of blue skies and blue seas, of lands where eternal summer reigns, where the orange and the olive grow, fancy that Nature has forgotten her general rule of equalizing her gifts. The favours she would at first sight seem to have bestowed on one region of the earth in preference to another have generally some counterpart in scourges and visitations, from which climates apparently less blessed are exempted. Count Tattenbach was confined six months to his bed with fever and dysentery.
I mentioned this to Lady Hester, and, in conformity with her system, that every person’s star, whilst descending to its nadir, even although otherwise a favourable one, may have sinister influences, which change to brighter prospects as the star again mounts to its zenith, she told me to comfort him by the assurance that he had seen the most unfortunate years of his life, and might now hope for better ones. “Tell him the story,” continued she, “of Abdallah, the black slave” (and this was a very favourite story of hers), “who was sultan for a day: you have heard of it twenty times, and I dare say you don’t recollect it.” I confessed I did not. “Well, then,” resumed she, “there was a black who had been bought by a cruel master, who treated him with constant harshness: he put him to the most severe tasks, and, not contented with the customary service of a slave, he made a beast of burden of him, by putting a pack-saddle on his back, and loading him like an ass. The poor Abdallah bore all his hardships without repining; when one day, whilst he was in the fields, carrying manure with his panniers on his back, the tyr el hakem hovered over his head, and was seen by the inhabitants of the place. The tyr el hakem is a bird known in the East; and the people have a rooted belief that the individual, over whose head it hovers, is, or will come to be a sovereign. The reigning sultan died just at the time, and, the report having spread of the omen manifested in favour of Abdallah, nothing would content the populace, but that Abdallah should be proclaimed his successor: but Abdallah was a poor, uneducated creature, and, sensible of his incapacity for so elevated a station, he prayed to God that, if he were to be sultan, his reign might expire shortly. God granted his prayer; for he died the same day that he was proclaimed; and, to this hour, the curious and pious Mussulmans who visit Constantinople go to see the tomb of Sultan Abdallah, the negro. Thus,” continued Lady Hester, “those who are depressed by wretchedness and misfortune, may, in an hour, if such is the will of God, be elevated to the pinnacle of greatness.”
As I did not very clearly perceive what analogy there was between Count Tattenbach’s typhus fever and the black’s sufferings, although I complied with Lady Hester’s wish in relating the story, I generalized it, and left out the particulars of the pack-saddle. The count was grateful to her for the interest she took in his past sufferings; and, to prove it to her, as she considered him hardly convalescent, he politely consented to take another black dose.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, I accompanied the prince and the count for a ride, and took them to a spot where, from a lofty peak, they looked down on a secluded valley, singularly striking, from the wild, mountainous scenery in which it is embosomed. In the bottom of the ravine stands a monastery of schismatic Catholics, called Dayr Sëydy. The prince proved himself a bold rider, as he often kept his horse in a trot over places where a person, used only to European roads, would have thought his neck in danger at a foot-pace. In our way I showed him Dayr el Benát, a convent; a fine old ilex, or evergreen oak, whose main branches stretch out horizontally about forty feet from the trunk, and whose trunk measures seven French metres in circumference; also a willow, with beautiful bloom, like orange flowers (saule du Levant aux fleurs odoriférantes). We returned just after sunset with a good appetite, I having slipped over my horse’s head, saddle and all, in one of the steep descents, where the prince trotted on like a fearless horseman, as he is. After dining with my family, I joined him again. He was dictating his journal to the young count: Mahbôoby was lying on an ottoman in the corner of the room covered over with a quilt, and the black girl with her, one with her head peeping out at one extremity, and one at the other, a favourite mode of sleeping two in a bed in the Levant. What advantage it has over the European manner I never could discover. Lying at full length, and sleeping at all hours, whether by day or by night, are the great enjoyments of the blacks, as has been already observed. Travellers in these countries, however exalted their rank, are compelled, under many circumstances, to overlook such apparent violations of decorum, and descend from their stilted forms of good breeding to those homely approaches to a state of nature.