This letter goes by the servant, who has in charge the basket of syrups, and whom I had called back when about ten minutes on his road.
H. L. Stanhope.
The servant was despatched, and many conjectures were formed as to who the Baron de Busech could be. The reader will say that it mattered little who he was, and that humanity dictated, when a sick person demanded assistance, to go without delay and afford it. This, in common cases, no doubt was what I or any other medical practitioner should feel it his duty to do; but, where Lady Hester was concerned, the ordinary rules of life would not hold good. I at once considered what a warfare would ensue between her ladyship and myself on the treatment to be followed (she always assuming the right of dictation); and I thought it best to say I was afraid of the plague: for, although I felt little difficulty in giving way to Lady Hester’s opinion on other matters in discussion between us of every possible kind, it was different where the treatment of the sick was concerned; for there the case became serious, and life and death were in the balance.
Lady Hester made this, my refusal, a pretext for a long lecture, which she delivered in a mild tone, but mixed with the self-boasting common to her. Her reasoning was indisputably sound, but she did not know the motive that guided me.
Sunday, May 27.—Her ladyship’s letter to the baron was taken to Logmagi at Sayda, who went immediately and delivered it to that gentleman, and, according to the orders sent to him, offered his services and those of her ladyship to all the party. He then came up to the Dar, and informed her that the strangers were several in number, Germans of distinction, and delivered a letter to her from one of them. It was couched in courtly language, to thank her for her attention to them. It repeated the request that she would let her doctor come down, and was signed Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria.
As Beyrout was closed, owing to the plague, and the Sayda bakers never make any bread but flat cakes, flaky and unpalateable, Lady Hester ordered, as a first step for their comfort, a baking of forty or fifty loaves, about the size of twopenny loaves: and this supply was continued to the duke and his suite during the whole time they remained. She sent tea and a teapot, rum, brandy, and such little things as she knew could not be procured in the town. These articles were accompanied by a letter, as follows:—
To H.R.H. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.
Jôon, May 27, 1838.
Highness,