Nasr, enveloping himself with mystery, rushed up to Lady Hester's tent, relating that he was going to be attacked on account of his alliance with her. "I shall perish rather than abandon thee," he declared, making visible efforts to animate himself to enthusiasm. Lady Hester, having judged the degree of his heroism, decided to leave him and to go alone into the desert. Refusing to listen to him, alarmed by this new folly, she sprang on her horse and started. Her mare was a good one and her dagger trustworthy. Suddenly, she caught sight of Bedouins armed to the teeth who were coming in her direction. Then, standing erect on her stirrups, and removing the yashmak which veiled her face transfigured by anger, she cried in a voice of command: "Stop! stop!" Pronounced in an unknown tongue, this order only produced the more effect, and the horsemen reined back their steeds, but to raise exclamations of joy and admiration. It was only a ruse of Nasr to prove her courage. The Bedouin pleasantries are sometimes clumsy.
On the morrow, towards midday, at the time when the sun was dissolving the sands into orange-coloured gems, Lady Hester and her escort reached the last hills which guarded the mysterious town. And the desert was suddenly peopled with strange beings, gnomes or demons sprung up from the earth. All the male inhabitants of Palmyra had come to meet their visitor. Some fifty of them, on foot, clad in simple little short petticoats and ornamented with a thousand glass beads, which glared on their swarthy skin like gildings on the morocco of a tawny binding, joined to their deafening cries the noise of old cauldrons and saucepans which they beat with all their might. Others, more proud than d'Artagnan himself, mounted on their Arab mares, fired their matchlocks under the nose of Lady Hester, who happily did not dislike the smell of powder. They mimicked the attack and defence of a caravan, and the pedestrians gave proof of an incredible dexterity in the art of plundering the horsemen. Never had more experienced valets de chambre, in a shorter time, undressed their masters from head to foot.
Lady Hester quietened the excited band so soon as she caught sight of the square towers with which the Valley of Tombs began, and demanded silence.
The ruins were there.... What joy and what pleasure there is in the discovery of dead cities! These places which were the theatre of events which distance has rendered extraordinary belong to the traveller. He is able at his pleasure and for some hours to recover the colonnades which the sand smothers, to finish Justinian's wall, to people the fallen temples and the mortally wounded tetraphylles with the shades of those whom he particularly admires.
But this evocation was not permitted Lady Hester. Palmyra lived again. Palmyra was taking a new and different flight with all these Bedouins clinging to its ruined flanks as to the wrinkled visage of an old coquette whom paint and powder rejuvenate too much for recollection, not enough for credibility.
Across these steppes of gilded stones, from which stood out some beautiful columns intact and virginal, one could divine still the line of a triumphal portico. The great central arcade raised towards the sky its pillars fifty feet high, while the lateral arcades, more modest, framed it intermittently. Infinite rows of columns of a rose and yellow colour; stone flesh caressed and polished by the burning and amorous suns of thousands of days! Against each column leant a console bearing the statue of a celebrated personage, perhaps one of those bold caravan leaders who, from the rivers Tigris or Ganges, had brought to Palmyra the brocades of Mosul and the silks of Baghdad, the glass-ware of Irak, the ivory sculptured in silver, the porcelains of China, the sandal-wood and the pearls. But the sands which swallow up everything, the living as the dead, had mingled the débris of the statues with the bones of the heroes. There remained only Greek or Palmyrian inscriptions half-eaten away by time.
What was, then, this prodigy? On the iron props which formerly sustained the consoles, young girls were mounted. They kept their fifteen or sixteen year old bodies so perfectly rigid that from afar they looked like white statues. Their loose robes were twisted round their bodies in antique draperies; they wore veils and garlands of flowers. On each side of the pillars, other young girls were grouped. And from one column to the other ran a string of beautiful brown children elevating thyrsi. While Lady Hester was passing these living statues remained motionless, but afterwards, springing from their pedestals, they joined the procession, dancing. The triumphal promenade continued for twelve hundred metres, to terminate in the final apotheosis. Suspended by a miracle to the top of the last arch, a young Bedouin girl deposited a crown on the head of Lady Hester. Then the popular enthusiasm knew no longer any bounds. The poets—all the Arabs are poets—chanted verses in her praise, and the crowd took up the chorus, to the great displeasure of the forty camels, which protested loudly. The entire village was dancing in the steps of the stranger who had braved the seas and the deserts to come to it.
Lady Hester was at last satisfied. She was not astonished, for nothing could surpass her dreams of vengeance and her desire for glory. Why did they not see her entry into Palmyra, those detested English who had so disdainfully discarded her? Moore in his golden medallion took part in the fête.
By what was in former times a monumental staircase, but was now only dust, she arrived at the Temple of the Sun. Erected out of blocks of marble, it rose still great on the field of desolation and ruins. The gigantic walls of the sacred enclosure were crumbling in all parts, exposing the immense square court 250 metres in length which surrounded the sanctuary, to-day a mosque. As veritable butchers of art, the Arabs had slashed the sanctuary to dig there their dens, and the pure line of columns appeared to weep over this invasion of executioners. At her house the excited people left her.
Bruce and Meryon, who retained a strong academic tincture, had abundant leisure during the quiet hours of that evening to recall their classical souvenirs. Zenobia and Hester Stanhope! What a vast horizon opens to all the meditations of history and philosophy! What a comparison to make between the former sovereign of Palmyra and her whom the Bedouins were already proclaiming their queen! Do they not yield to the ready temptation to compare.