It was resolved to wait here for Selim, whose departure from home had been announced to Lady Hester by letter. She was lodged in a small convent, which had once belonged to the Jesuits; and every arrangement for the comfort of so numerous a party had been made by the shaykh of the village, named Latûf el Ashy, who, having passed his youth at Tripoli, as a clerk in a mercantile house, spoke a little French. Two days afterwards Selim arrived, accompanied by a boy fourteen years old, Sulymán, the son of Mâlem Skender, of Hems, of whom mention was made in a preceding part. Selim had two servants with him, and Sulymán one. Selim alighted at the shaykh’s door, where an apartment was provided for him, and where I waited to receive him. On hearing the noise of his horse’s feet, I ran to welcome him as an old acquaintance, and conducted him up the steps into his room. A few minutes afterwards I was surprised to find Sulymán did not follow, and desired one of the servants to see if he had gone into a wrong room. He returned and whispered to me that Sulymán was at the foot of the steps, and would not come in, unless I went and fetched him in the same form as I had done Selim. Surprised at this boy’s ridiculous ceremoniousness, I would have laughed at him, but I found that he was in good earnest. This circumstance is mentioned as illustrative of the pride of Christians in the Levant, which swells where their demands on people’s civility are likely to be complied with, and shrinks into nothing before Turks, or where they expect a repulse.
The mornings were spent by Selim and myself in sitting and smoking by the side of the stream on a carpet spread for the purpose, or in riding. He had with him a very beautiful horse, which he backed with much elegance. Conducted by the shaykh, we went to view the Cedars; but they have been too often described to render it necessary to say anything about them. The neighbouring convent keeps so far a guard over these sacred trees, that no native peasant dares injure and cut them. Travellers, however, did not scruple to take away as large a branch or piece as suited their wants; but latterly some restraint has been put upon them, and it is now necessary to obtain an order for that purpose. These Cedars have a very dubious reputation, and no great beauty to recommend them. Those which grow in the grounds of Warwick Castle are (the traditions attached to the others excepted) almost equally worth seeing.
We remained at Eden a week, and went thence to the monastery of Mar Antaniûs, (St. Anthony) situate about half a league to the south of the village, on one of the most romantic sites that can be found in any country, half way down a deep and precipitous ravine: and, although we could look down upon it from Ehden, yet, to get there, it was necessary for persons on horseback to make a circuit of two leagues. At the bottom of the ravine, which is well wooded, is a river, the Kadýshy; and the summits of the mountains quite overhang the monastery, which stands on a ledge of the rock scarcely broad enough for its base, and which is only accessible by a path, so narrow that habit alone could make persons pass it with indifference. From the rock, in the very centre of the monastery, issues a stream of water, that, in summer, must give a delicious coolness to the cloister, but now produced a cold and comfortless chill.
The friars are Maronites, fifty or sixty in number, including residents and mendicants. Many miracles are attributed, by the inhabitants of the surrounding country, to the tutelary saint of the place: such as the cure of lunacy, epilepsy, and fits; the incorruptibility of corpses buried in the monastery; and, more especially, the certain manifestation of his anger towards anything of the female sex that presumes to cross the threshold of this holy place. I believe this to have been the chief reason that induced Lady Hester to turn out of her road to visit it. So tenacious of violation is Saint Anthony in this respect, that the hen-fowls are cooped up, lest they should stray into the sacred precincts, whilst the cocks run at large.
On our arrival, Lady Hester was accordingly lodged in a house about fifty yards distant, built for visitors; whilst we were received into the monastery. As soon as she had rested a little, she sent a message to the superior, announcing her intention of trying the Saint’s gallantry, and, saying that she would, on the following day, give a dinner to him and to the shaykhs, who had escorted her from Eden, in a room of the monastery itself. She hinted at the authority with which she was furnished from the Sultan to visit what places she chose; and that, consequently, any opposition on their part would be opposition to him. But there were not wanting some priests who openly avowed their abhorrence of such impiety, whilst the greater number secretly murmured at this sacrilege on the part of a heretic, and that heretic a woman. Selim, who was a man of great discernment and knowledge of the world, which he concealed under a mock frivolity and gaiety, which made many persons imagine him to be half mad, pretended that, on such a grand occasion, nothing less than a Cashmere shawl must cover the sofa whereon Lady Hester was to sit, and that no common carpet would serve to rest her feet on.[14] For he was much afraid that some trick would be practised by the monks, either on the sofa or carpet, in order to preserve the miraculous consistency of their saint. My own foresight went no farther than to desire that the ass should be carefully watched previous to her riding from the adjoining house to the monastery: for the path was on the edge of a low precipice, and a bramble under its tail, or a pin in the crupper, would have been sufficient to endanger the rider’s life. When the dinner hour arrived, Lady Hester mounted; and, being determined that the monks should have no subterfuge, she would not dismount until she had ridden on her she-ass into the very hall of the building; and I verily believe, if the wiser sort did not, that at least the servants of the monastery, and her ladyship’s own, expected to see the pavement gape beneath her feet and swallow her up. She visited the refectory and every place where she could put her head; but at one door there was a momentary altercation between the two parties of monks, who were for and against her entering. We then sat down to dinner, and, at the expiration of four hours, Lady Hester retired. The news of her courage, as it was construed by some, and her sacrilege, as it was called by others, soon spread through the mountain, and was long the topic of general conversation.
This monastery had a printing-press, which lay useless, owing to the recent death of an old monk called Seraphim, who was the founder and worker of it, having himself made the font of the types. I was presented with a specimen of his labours, being a single sheet containing a notice of the miracles that had been wrought by the tutelary saint.
The glebe of Mar Antaniûs produces, as I was informed, to the amount of fifteen purses in silk.
Canubin and other convents in this district, although well worthy of the traveller’s attention, were not visited by us on account of the weather. We left the friars, who were greatly satisfied with her ladyship’s generosity, and proceeded, with the rain upon us, to a village called Keffer-zayny, on our road to Tripoli. Lady Hester fell from her ass in the way, but received no hurt, for two lads always walked by her, one on either side, who supported her knees and back in craggy and difficult places. The ass was without a bridle, and was left, with the sagacity for which that animal is known, to pick his own way. We were escorted by a guard of armed men. The difficulties of the road were more than commonly great. A man, dressed in a splendid scarlet robe, presented himself to Lady Hester in the evening, and created a great deal of merriment by his assumed airs of importance.
On the following day we arrived at Tripoli, amidst a tremendous storm of thunder and rain. The report of Lady Hester’s approach had spread through the city, and the streets through which she had to pass were lined with spectators, whose curiosity must have been great to induce them to stand the pelting of such a storm.