Preceded by torch-bearers, Lady Hester visited the mosque. She stopped for a long time before the sculptured ceiling on which could still be made out the twelve signs of the Chaldean Zodiac. The astrologers, from the depths of their mysterious chapels, had they predicted to Zenobia the flight towards the Euphrates, the ascent to the Capitol under the chains of gold, and the villa on the pleasant slopes of Tivoli. And Lady Hester, in the presence of those stars which were crumbling slowly in the gloom and the silence, had she the presentiment of her solitary destiny in a shaking castle?
All went for the best, until one day Nasr surprised four Faydans roaming round the springs. Captured, two amongst them evaded the vigilance of their guards and fled during the night. At this news, Nasr, tearing his hair, cried out like one possessed and declared that it was necessary to leave without delay, for the fugitives had gone to warn their tribe of the rich booty which awaited them. The departure was fixed for the next day.
For the last time Lady Hester went over her realm. The setting sun reanimated the jagged skeleton of the dead town. The tall columns sparkled like candles. The night was transparent, the sky of velvet, in which the golden stars trembled with a beauty which oppressed the heart. In an uncovered space of the ruins of the temple, the servants had lighted a great fire. They were giving a farewell reception. The flames revealed dark faces and wild gambols. Pierre, naturally, was recounting his history, and all bent their heads to listen to him, sometimes mimicking the narrator, sometimes repeating in chorus an astonishing passage. A Bedouin was explaining, in his manner, the great deeds of Napoleon:
"The French are supernatural beings; their weapons of war are more terrible than thunder. They have cannon which discharge balls of a size which cannot be measured; and, extraordinary thing! very often these balls remain quiet for a moment. Then, at the moment when one thinks the least of them, they open with a crash and destroy everything which surrounds them (bombs). They have, besides, the gift of multiplying at will, for often one sees a little troop advancing, which, at the moment when one thinks the least of it, extends, multiplies and covers sometimes a plain of which they occupied at first only a little part (square battalions). Finally, they possess guns with which they fire often fifteen or twenty shots without needing to reload; it is a continual fire (line or platoon firing). There are among them soldiers who wear tall caps of hair; ho! those men are terrible; one is enough to bring to the ground six Arab horsemen. The country which they inhabit is very far from here; it is separated from us by the sea. Ah, well! if they desired, they would succeed in passing under it and would arrive here in the twinkling of an eye...." The jargon of the women, kept apart from these fraternal love-feasts, alone rent the darkness.
On April 4, at dawn, the Bedouins, excited by the arrival of the Faydans, broke up the camp in all haste. Lady Hester was broken-hearted at leaving without saying good-bye. As for the doctor, he was chiefly anxious to procure the recipe for a sweet sauce to eat with hare, in which figured dried raisins and onions. That interested him much more than all the ruins of creation. Nasr, through calculation or through fear of losing the deposit entrusted to Muly Ismael, hastened the march, allowing respite neither to beasts nor men. He was not reassured until after having crossed the Belaz mountains and fallen in with the tribe of the Sebah and many other Bedouin tribes which were posted on the path of the Syt.
Lady Hester was thirty-seven years of age at this period, but her dazzling beauty was able to face the double proof of broad daylight and popular infatuation. Lovingly thousands of women—whom she had, besides, overwhelmed with handkerchiefs and necklaces—surrounded her. All the men, fascinated by her manner of mounting half-wild horses, proclaimed her Queen, and made her enter their tribe, giving her, as to a child of the desert, the right of recommending travellers. It is then that a Bedouin, carried away by the cavalcades, the cheering and the general enthusiasm, threw down his keffiye, crying: "Let them give me a hat, and I will go to England!"
Lady Hester learned afterwards that 300 Faydan horsemen had pursued the caravan, but having fallen foul of the rearguard of the Sebahs, they had abandoned a game lost in advance. There had been some wounded, and the doctor was requested to give them his attention. But what was he to do with the light-hearted fellows who washed their wounds with the urine of camels and who, after some days of this treatment, were in perfect health! It is useless to be fastidious; it is too disconcerting.
In the midst of an extraordinary concourse of admirers and spectators, Lady Hester returned to her pleasant villa at Hama. Nasr drew his 2000 piastres and returned to his desert, quite contented. How far is this modest sum from the 30,000 piastres which a number of travellers benevolently lent him, Didot at their head! As for the two Bedouins whom Lady Hester had brought with the intention of exhibiting them later in England, they pined away so rapidly, they assumed so quickly a pitiable and sickly appearance, that she was obliged to send them back without delay to their vermin and their sun.
CHAPTER IX
FROM THE TEMPLE OF BAALBECK TO THE RUINS OF ASCALON
LADY HESTER, whose health was detestable, hoped that a new sky and a new climate would bring her that cure which always persisted in fleeing before her. On May 10, 1813, she left the enchantress Hama without regrets. The sun was scorching and the marching hours very trying, but Lady Hester, who never permitted herself to be inconvenienced, slept late and preferred to allow the porters to sweat blood and water at high noon. The caravan went back towards the north, so far as Latakia, where the traveller calculated to embark for Russia and perhaps for the Indies. Meantime, she maintained an active correspondence with Ebir Sihoud, the King of the Wahabis, her credulous imagination being stimulated by the Bedouin stories about this prince, who had presented himself with 800 wives. The doctor did not succeed in ascertaining what were her intentions, until she was about to depart. "It is to be hoped that she has no idea of making an excursion to Derazeh," said he in alarm; "she would be capable of taking me!"