The Circe of the deserts

by Paule Henry-Bordeaux

She had known the pleasure of exercising authority without control, of commanding with the certainty of being obeyed; she had had the halo of fame without having its reverses, and then on a sudden she was no longer anything. Nothingness. Had she need of a shilling? Every purse was closed. Naturally, no more horses or carriages. Were she to ride in a hackney-coach. There was always some charitable soul to say: "Whom do you think I have met in a hackney-coach this afternoon?" ... Did she go on foot.... There were always well-intentioned persons to insinuate that Lady Hester Stanhope did not walk alone for nothing....

Did she meet a friend and walk a few steps with him, immediately all the neighbourhood was twittering:

"Have you seen Lady Hester Stanhope crossing Hanover Square with such and such a person? I wonder where they went." ... Confined in the pillory, she was obliged, without hope of revenge, to endure the insults of those at whom she had imprudently scoffed when intoxicated with power. And they were so much the more to be feared since they were enticed by the certainty of impunity. Men, like animals, soon become vicious when they know they are the stronger. She fled from London, and her little cottage at Builth, in Wales, was invaded in its turn by all that clique of people who make it their business to gloat over the misfortunes of others.

Charles, her favourite brother, and General Sir John Moore, the only man, except Camelford, who had ever touched her heart, were both dead. In the garden of her hopes there was nothing but tombs. What was there to stand in the way of her leaving England?

Long before the man in the crow's-nest had shouted: "Land to starboard!" Lady Hester's piercing eyes had made out a rocky point. It was Cap Finistère—France!

France! Her uncle Pitt had been there once, once only, between two Parliamentary sessions. It was in the autumn of 1783. After a stay at Rheims, at the time of the vintage, he had spent some days in Paris. The King was at Fontainebleau and all the fashionable world far from the capital, "with the exception of the English, who had the air of being in possession of the town." He visited the monuments, attended the Comédie-Française, followed a stag-hunt, appeared full of gaiety and animation, although he became a little bored when people talked to him of Parliamentary reform, and attracted the notice of all the distinguished people, beginning with Queen Marie Antoinette.

But that M. and Madame Necker should have offered him their daughter, with an income of £14,000, was laughable. How, imbued with the Swiss ideas on domestic happiness, could they have dared to throw their daughter Germaine at the head of a foreigner whom they had known scarcely a few days? In any case, Pitt's theatrical reply: "I have already wedded my country," is nonsense. He was much more direct and, above all, much more sarcastic, the dear uncle!

The night fell; a mauve twilight blended with the coasts of France. Lady Hester bent her head. She saw again a little girl seven or eight years old who, furtively, throwing anxious glances to either side, unfastened a boat made fast to the beach at Hastings, raised the mooring-ring, grasped the oar with a sure hand and made for the open sea. This little girl, whose head had been turned by the visit which the Comte d'Adhémar, the French Ambassador, had paid Lord Stanhope, captivated by the plumed hats of the well-fed lackeys, flattered by the courteous manners and sweeping bows of the Count, had decided to go to France, to see what was happening there.

She had been overtaken far from the land. How well Hester recognised that little adventurous girl!...

But the first stars were shining in the clear sky, and this tall woman in mourning, who had remained motionless for hours, watching without seeing them the varying sports of the grey waves, rose at last and left the bridge while the Jason bore her to the conquest of the Orient.