In the environs of Deir-el-Kammar, Lady Hester went to see another chief of the Druses whose authority and influence were very considerable, the Sheik Bechir. He occupied the Palace of Moukhtara, and the doctor, who had more taste for feminine beauty than the poetry of nature, remarked that his wife was beautiful and his children charming.
These villages of the Lebanon, peopled by Druses, were silent and sad. The children even appeared grave. The men, robust mountaineers, with ruddy complexions, wore the black and white abaye and the immaculate turban with narrow and symmetrical folds. The women, strongly built and rather common-looking, save for their eyes, which were perfectly beautiful, displayed a picturesque costume: blue dress open at the neck and on the bosom, which it left entirely uncovered; embroidered trousers, and, above all, on the head, a strange edifice simulating a horn. A high cone of silver, of copper or of pasteboard, according to the conditions, bent backwards and veiled by a muslin handkerchief which fell back over the shoulders, and which the wind caused to float gracefully. They concealed it with a jealous care, replying to the travellers who proposed to buy it from them that they would prefer to part with their heads. Love carried so far that they did remove it even to sleep and combed themselves until Doomsday. From their hair hung three silken cords decorated with green, blue or red tassels.
Lady Hester, wishing to see, with her own eyes, if the Druses eat raw meat, as she had been told many times, bought a sheep and collected some villagers. The guests, feeling themselves the object of the assembly, added no doubt many supplementary grimaces and gluttonous attitudes, which left the doctor under a bad impression. It did not prevent the sheep from disappearing in the twinkling of an eye, including the tail, which was large and greasy.
The doctor had lost his servant, who, inconsolable for having left the onions of Egypt, had gone back to his own country. One morning, when he was lamenting his loss on his doorstep, he saw appear a long raw-boned individual, thin and dried up, dressed in sombre garments and exhibiting a turban of doubtful black. This new-comer, in a French seasoned with a Gascon accent, offered himself with eloquence as valet, cook, guide and interpreter. Bewildered, the doctor succumbed beneath the torrent of words, the vigorous gestures, the expressive mimicry, while examining the pointed and angular outline, the bony and deeply-lined face, the cavernous and bright eyes. Curiosity aiding necessity (the caravan was on the eve of starting for Damascus), he engaged this extraordinary person. The information which he gathered in the village was favourable enough. Pierre is mad, they told him, and everyone knows that in the East madness is of no importance.
This worthy fellow came of a good family of Marseilles: marquises and marchioness or something of that kind, but which had for a very long time been established in Syria. One of his uncles, having business with the Government, brought him when quite a child to France. One day, while he was walking at Versailles, chance brought him across the path of Louis XVI. The King and Monsieur, struck by his Oriental costume, and perhaps also by his agitated manner, spoke to him of the countries of the Levant. All the vanity and the boastfulness of the South, which a long succession of ancestors had dimly implanted in him, mounted to his head, and he derived enormous advantage from this interview. He brought back to Syria a stock of magnificent histories, of which he was naturally the hero, and notions of French and of cookery in which the provincial, after all, predominated. When Bonaparte came to lay siege to St. Jean d'Acre, he rendered some services as interpreter and accompanied the French into Egypt, where he remained until their departure. He obtained a pension, which the Government forgot to pay him. It was then that God bestowed upon him the gift of prophecies. Melancholy gift, which no one desires. He returned to Deir-el-Kammar believing firmly in the resurrection of his unhappy country. Not understood by his friends, scoffed at by his neighbours, despised by his relatives, he lived pitifully until the news of the arrival of an English princess ran through the Lebanon like a train of gunpowder. Then he realised that his destiny was there; he took his wallet and his staff, and deserted his wife (who was no doubt ugly), to follow the unknown. In the evening, by the camp fires, he achieved extraordinary success with the account of his adventures. He used to begin invariably:
"When General Bonaparte formed a corps of Mamelukes, I enrolled in it with a great number of Syrians, my friends. As soon as we had been trained in the handling of arms, we were sent into Upper Egypt to join General Desaix's division. One day, after vainly pursuing the enemy who fled from us, we arrived very tired on the border of the desert and encamped. I was on the main guard of the camp, and, towards the middle of the night, when all the fires were extinguished, I heard a hyena howl in a strange manner, and at some distance from there the young camels raised distressing moans. The sky was entirely covered. Suddenly, I distinguished a sound, which seemed to be advancing towards me. It was at first only a murmur. I listened, and I heard distinctly the words:
"'Pierre, Pierre, the Arabs will have a King and a Queen!'
"This prodigy filled me with fright; and while I sought to recover my senses, the same words struck my ear and carried trouble into my soul. The dreams of the night recounted to me magnificent triumphs and royal fêtes..
"On the morrow I related to my companions what I had heard; but no one was inclined to attach any faith to my words.
"Since that day I have spoken of these things to many men; I have endeavoured to move their hearts to seek by what way the hope might be able to enter them. But the men have only jeered at me; they received my prophecy with insults.