On their arrival at the Piræus, the travellers saw a man who was flinging himself from the great mole into the sea. The exploits of Byron repeating Leander's achievement and crossing the Hellespont by swimming, had already come to their ears. Lord Sligo felt sure that he recognised him in this bold diver and hailed him. Byron, for it was indeed he, dressed in haste and soon came to join them. He even lent his horses to go to Athens to find means of transport in order to fetch Lady Hester and his numerous trunks.
Having nothing to do, Bruce and the doctor tried to enter into relations with a band of young veiled Turkish girls seated on the beach. The latter, scared, took to flight, and Bruce, who had not learned enough from his recent experience, made many signs to them to induce them to remain. Some Turks who were lounging about the jetty muttered threats against this enterprising Frank. He narrowly escaped getting into mischief.
At Athens, Lady Hester, who was an excellent organiser of comfort, transformed in a few hours her temporary house into a pleasant home, where every evening an agreeable little company assembled.
Byron, who had been at college with Sligo and Bruce, was amongst the number; but finding the manners of the hostess too despotic, he soon grew tired. He pleaded urgent business in the Morea and did not reappear until a few days before his departure. It is always disagreeable for those who have fled from their country to meet their compatriots again. It diminishes the consideration of the inhabitants, above all when these new-comers possess illustrious rank, originality and eccentricity. Lady Hester and Byron could compete on these three points, and this accidental occurrence of what an Englishman hates the most in the world, to be acquainted with another travelling Englishman, was not calculated to establish a sympathetic intercourse.
On Byron's side, the affair was complicated by wounded masculine vanity. Anxious to excess concerning its beauty and its harmony, he suffered enormously from his constant lameness. And now chance was giving him as a rival a woman redoubtable, astonishingly attractive, notwithstanding that she had a figure like a grenadier, and possessing two feet superbly arched and of equal size, which did not allow themselves to be easily forgotten! Men have never cared to meet superior women, even in the size of their shoes.
Lady Hester, who prided herself upon being a physiognomist, considered his eyes defective; the only thing that pleased her was the ringlet on his forehead. For Byron, accustomed to other conquests, this was indeed little. As for the poet, "it is easy enough to write verses," confided he to the doctor, "and as to the matter of ideas, God knows where you find them! You pick up some old books which no one knows and borrow what is inside." The man of the world and the man of letters having been united in a general reprobation, Byron made the best of the situation: that is to say, by separating without delay from this Britannic Juno.
The doctor less stern, saw Byron more often. He remarked his singular manner of entering a drawing-room, making skilful détours from chair to chair, so far as that which he had chosen, anxious to conceal his lameness, which this manœuvre, after all, made the more apparent. Byron exploited this admiration in persuading the doctor to attend a young Greek girl in whom he was greatly interested.
[1]Ancient name of the Lake of Janina.
CHAPTER III
ORIENTAL INITIATION
ON October 16, 1810, Lady Hester Stanhope and her companions left Athens on board of a Greek polacca. But, having been enlightened in regard to the skill of the mariners who, in time of storm, fold their arms, invoking St. George and leaving Heaven to take charge of the working of the ship, they disembarked in all haste at Erakli—the ancient Heraclea—and Lord Sligo and Bruce proceeded to Constantinople to seek aid. They returned with a Turkish officer provided with a firman. Barques awaited, of that type in which the prow is shallow and the poop pointed, with those fine bronze-chested sailors, with flowing breeches and scarlet tarboosh, whose deep voices add to the melancholy of the passage the charm of unknown tongues.