What unforgettable recollections were those evening halts around the dull fires! The encampment and its vicinity were swarming with living things. Camels with velvet steps returning from the springs with their moist leathern bottles; children romping with the foals; women tatooed with fantastical flowers going to milk the she-camels or park the kids. The air resounded with the call of the shepherds and the bleating of the sheep, which were returning in disorder. In the shadow you heard the flocks breathing. The horses, which were shackled near the tents, pawed the sand impatiently, and the desert stretched out its limbs with gladness at the approach of night. The Bedouins, all attention, closely encircled the old poets come from the banks of the Euphrates, who chanted the splendour of dead heroes, and the cry of the roving hyenas made the narrow tents appear better.
Mahannah escorted Lady Hester to within a few miles of Hama, and Nasr himself conducted her so far as the house which had been prepared for her. In the middle of December, the rest of the expedition rejoined Lady Hester. The doctor lodged with the Lascaris, and had then all the time and the leisure to observe and know this mysterious personage.
Lamartine, in his introduction to the Récit du séjour de Fatella Sayeghir chez les Arabes du grand désert, has traced an astonishing portrait of this Lascaris who, from the end of the Directory, foresaw that Asia alone offered a suitable field for the regenerating ambition of the hero. "It appears that the young warrior of Italy, whose imagination was as luminous as the East, vague as the desert, great as the world, had on this subject confidential conversations with M. de Lascaris, and darted a flash of his mind towards that horizon which was opening to him his destiny. It was only a flash, and I am grieved by it; it is evident that Bonaparte was the man of the East, and not the man of Europe.... In Asia, he would have stirred men by millions, and, a man of simple ideas himself, he would have with two or three ideas erected a monumental civilisation which would have endured a thousand years after him. But the error was committed: Napoleon chose Europe; only he wished to throw an explorer behind him to discover what there would be to do there and to mark out the route to the Indies, if his fortune were to open it to him. M. de Lascaris was this man. Man of genius, of talent and of sagacity, he feigned a sort of monomania to form an excuse for his stay in Syria and his persistent relations with all the Arabs of the desert who arrived at Aleppo."
This judgment is curious, if it is not entirely just, for Lamartine treats with the last contempt the internal work of Napoleon—magnificent administration drawn from the chaos of the Revolution, and which France maintains still—which he calls an "unskilful restoration." As for the Eastern Question, it seems, on the contrary, that the Emperor had had intercourse with it. If he had been the man of Europe, he would have engaged in a merciless hand-to-hand struggle with England; if he had devoted to his Navy a quarter of the attention which he gave to his Army, he would have struck his rival a mortal blow. In place of that, he parries the blows, he forestalls them, he attacks himself, but the mind is elsewhere, farther away, turned no doubt towards the Levant. The Egyptian expedition, despatch of Sebastiani to Constantinople, mission of General Gardane to Teheran, and, above all, efforts constant, perpetual, obstinate to preserve the integrity of the Turkish Empire and bridle the Russian appetite, the Moscow campaign to subdue the Czar, the only troublesome competitor at Constantinople, are they not the tangible proofs of the Eastern desire which the creative and robust imagination of Napoleon did not conceive as a mirage? Did he intend to remake the Roman Empire with its frontiers dispersed over three worlds and perhaps the empire of Alexander with undefined limits. The fall of the eagles has carried away his secret. But at present we are in 1812, on the eve of the Russian expedition. Napoleon has made M. de Nerciat, former attaché to the Gardene mission, and Colonel Boutin start for St. Jean d'Acre and Egypt in order to sound the ground and to prepare the new ways which the victories—he did not imagine the possibility of a defeat—were going to open. Lascaris precedes them then seven or eight years on the desert routes. For what purpose? To prepare the invasion of the Indies? Lamartine affirms it formally and gives Lascaris qualifications and a position of the first importance.
What is certain, is that, if Lascaris were the secret agent of Napoleon, he was a remarkable actor and played his part in so masterly a manner that not only the doctor—after all, but little of a physiognomist—but Lady Hester, who was more difficult to deceive, allowed themselves to be duped completely by it.
It will be amusing to know Lady Hester's opinion on this subject, if only in order to follow the evolution of a woman's judgment.
On returning from her journey to the Emir Mahannah, Lascaris is lauded to the skies. She writes at that time to General Oakes, Governor of Malta:
"I have met here an extraordinary character, Mr. Lascaris, of Ventimiglia. He is a little giddy, but he is a remarkable man who has an astonishing knowledge of the Arabs. He is extremely poor and very energetic. If he falls into the hands of the French, we shall stand some chance of repenting of it in the future. At present he is altogether English, and it would be worth the trouble of maintaining him in his excellent inclinations. The chancellery of the Order of Malta and the advocate Torrigiani have all the papers relating to his family and to his humble demands: little pension which would assure him a piece of bread; he asks nothing more!"
And General Oakes is solicited to intervene, to represent to the Government all the advantage which there will be in keeping a faithful subject at the gates of the desert where the turbulent Arabs were beginning to shake off the yoke of the pachas.
"Besides," added she, "it would be a great act of humanity towards a great man. The French plough the desert with emissaries and envoys. Why should we not do the same thing ...?"