The mountains assumed a severe aspect. The path plunged into the rock like a nail into a wall. They reached a village amongst the fig-trees, where they were courteously received by the king of the mountain, the great sheik Abu Ghosh, who held in his hands the keys of Jerusalem. Detested by the surrounding pachas, feared by the travellers, he lived in independent existence in the midst of his hardy and brave mountaineers. Imposing dues at his pleasure upon the caravans, holding the pilgrims to ransom, levying taxes upon the convents, compelling the monks to bring out their little savings, he reigned without dispute over the mountains of Judea, from Ramle to Jerusalem, from Hebron to Jericho. Abu Ghosh was one of the most astonished of men to see a European woman arrive, surrounded by so numerous a suite, mounted on excellent horses. Ordinarily, the travellers contented themselves with wretched animals and clothed themselves in rags to pass unnoticed. The sheik, delighted to make the acquaintance of an English princess and fascinated by the haughty dignity of her manners, treated her very well. His four wives hastened to cook a delicate supper: vine-leaves filled with meat, stuffed pumpkins, roast mutton, chicken swimming in an ocean of boiled rice.
And the doctor thought sadly that this modest repast was the highest point of the culinary art of the Arabs.
When night came, Abu Ghosh installed himself with his pipes and his wives at the corner of the fire and watched over the sleep of the woman who had committed herself to his care. Early in the morning they separated as friends, and one of the sheik's brothers protected Lady Hester so far as Jerusalem.
Monotony of a poor land, and all at once, like a town of clouds, an apparition of the Middle Ages, loopholed walls and belfries, belfries and cupolas!... After having vigorously driven away the dragomans of the Franciscan monastery who clung to them tenaciously, and pointed them out in advance to Turkish cupidity, Lady Hester wandered into Jerusalem as her fancies dictated.
Accompanied by twenty horsemen, she made her way to Kengi-Ahmed, governor of the town. The seraglio partly opened its grated windows, eyelids closed by an unconquerable sleep on the Mosque of Omar, the holy mosque with its Persian and blue mosaics surrounded by gardens of cypress-trees. She went to the Holy Sepulchre, and her visit was not characterised by the meditation usually associated with a pilgrimage, not even with a pilgrimage undertaken for artistic purposes. The monks had, contrary to their custom, closed the doors of the church. They solemnly opened them and came in procession to meet her carrying lighted candles. The crowd, curious to see the spectacle, collected and vociferated in chorus. The police kept it at a distance by blows from cudgels. Lady Hester relieved the necessities of a Mameluke who had escaped the previous year from the Cairo massacre. When Emin Bey—that was his name—had heard the first shots fired by the Albanian soldiers massed on the walls, when the great slaughter had begun, he had comprehended that his only chance of safety lay in headlong flight. Then he had driven his spurs into his horse's flanks, and raising the animal, which was rearing and neighing with terror, he had leaped from the platform facing the citadel to the foot of the ramparts—a leap of forty-five or sixty feet. He had afterwards succeeded in reaching Jerusalem by the desert, not without having been first overpowered and robbed by the guides who conducted him. Since that time he had stooped to live on alms.
She sauntered in the infamous alleys of the Ghetto (Was it necessary to facilitate Brothers' task?), meeting children oldish-looking and shrivelled, the Jews of Central Europe with their orange-coloured greatcoats, wearing their tall skin caps and their abject air.
On May 30, Lady Stanhope, after a visit to Bethlehem, village of Judea, over which hover the glad memories of the Christ, where long lines of women defile like shadows, wearing with serene gravity their horned head-dresses and their trailing blue robes, reached St. Jean d'Acre by way of Atlitt beach, on which are engulfed the last vestiges of Pelerin Castle, and Haifa in the shadow of Mount Carmel. The road soon became more frequented. It was marked out by carcases. It seemed a giant abattoir. Dead horses, of which the inhabitants of the town had got rid; camels which had fallen exhausted on returning from a distant journey sick asses despatched on the spot. From this charnel-house issued an acrid and warm odour which turned the stomach. As the caravan passed, clouds of blue flies buzzed by in clusters, and yellow dogs fled growling and watched from a distance these intruders who came to share in their festival banquet. The sun burned with a malicious pleasure these heads half gnawed away, these eviscerated bodies, this greenish flesh. And the old bones, already picked clean by the jackals and washed by the rains, sparkled here and there, like great white flowers on the fields of corruption.
CHAPTER V
IN THE COUNTRY OF DJEZZAR PACHA AND THE EMIR BECHIR
ST. JEAN D'ACRE stretches out into the sea like a greyhound which stretches himself lazily in the sun. The tiny harbour seemed to have been scooped out to satisfy the caprice of some royal child. The mosque, Jama-el-Geydd, darted towards the sky, throwing like an imperious prayer its threatening minaret, and the multitude of the palm-trees crowded around it. And when the evening brought the sea breeze, they lamented and moaned like men, and the hushed waters in their marble fountains wept in distant echo in the sacred court. This mosque was one of the most beautiful of the Syrian coast, the antique debris of Ascalon and Cæsarea having covered with diversified mosaics, porphyry and jade the walls and floor. Amidst the verdure of the inner gardens roamed in a blaze of red and yellow flowers, the basins of painted earthenware, the santons and the tombs.
Lady Hester was the guest of Mr. Catafago, a personage in Syria, whom his title of agents of Europeans, his trading and his riches, had rendered celebrated. With his intelligent and keen countenance, his air of authority, his flashing eyes, this man had acquired an extraordinary ascendency over the Arabs and the Turks. It was he who facilitated Lamartine's journey in the Holy Land, and rendered it, if not comfortable, at least possible.