The Circe of the deserts

by Paule Henry-Bordeaux

The route, meadows spotted with mauve flowers in which the horses sank, followed the Orontes, dominated by the Ansaries mountains, a rugged chain still covered by a coating of snow.

Only, there arrived a thing which was not expected; the plague made its appearance and reigned as a harsh mistress over the Syrian coast. European vessels fled from the contaminated ports. Lady Hester accordingly hired a house and waited, without impatience, for the country was beautiful. All the summer she hunted the hares, the partridges, the francolins and the gazelles which abounded in the woods of olive and sycamore-trees on the bank of the Nahr-el-Kebir. Mr. Barker, the consul at Aleppo, had brought his little family.

On October 7, Bruce, recalled suddenly to England, set out for Aleppo with Beaudin. He was leaving his friend for a long time. What happened at this departure, which was to be without return? And, first, what was he in regard to Lady Hester. Simple travelling companion or lover? The doctor observes on this subject a discretion wholly professional. He remarks that Bruce, during the three years in which he travelled over the East with her, derived much from the fruit of her experience of the world and her conversation. We know nothing in reality. But who knows if Bruce did not think of Lady Hester what Heinrich Heine was to say later of Marie Kalergis: "She is not a woman; she is a monument; she is the cathedral of the god Love." And men do not much care about falling at the feet of cathedrals; they fear the gossip of the idlers, and they have too much difficulty in getting up again afterwards.

The plague was causing great havoc, redoubling its efforts, and established itself in the centre of the town. The Arabs, besides, referred the matter to Mohammed, and took no further precautions or remedies. Barker lost his two little girls. And, on the eve of starting for Sidon, Lady Hester, who had definitely renounced the idea of returning to Europe, was brought down; she also, by the disease. In the evening, the doctor was attacked by fever. Although hardly able to stand, he remained, none the less, at the pillow of the sick woman, for whom he disputed three weeks with death. The servants were struck down, and Latakia was shaken by a violent storm. The water entered in streams through the cracked roof, and they were obliged to move Lady Hester's bed incessantly to prevent it from being flooded. On December 15, she had a relapse; finally, on January 6, 1814, they succeeded in hoisting her into the boat which was to take her to Sidon.

In the environs of that town, the Greek patriarch Athanasius had let to her, for a mere nothing, the Monastery of Mar-Elias. This monastery, built on a bare spur of the Lebanon, commanded a view of the Syrian Sea. Small and dilapidated, it had the privilege of preserving in its walls the body of the last patriarch seated in his chair. Unpleasant detail: he had been badly embalmed and recalled himself to the sense of smell of his faithful friends in an ill-timed manner.

It is at this moment that Lady Hester changed in character. Her convalescence being prolonged, she became simple in her habits up to cynicism. She displayed in her conversation a bitter and singularly acute spirit, judging men as though she were reading from an open book in their hearts. She found some consolations in a Sphynx-like attitude, and being well acquainted with the undercurrents and the mechanism of European politics, she was able to afford herself the luxury of predictions realisable and rather often realised.

The plague, which the winter had for some months benumbed, resumed with the spring its victorious march. It broke out everywhere with a new violence, at Damascus, at Sidon, at Bairout, at Homs. The doctor hoped that the scourge would spare the little hamlet of Abra, some metres from the monastery where he had his quarters. But the late passion for cleanliness of a peasant named Constantine, who, at the age of sixty years, never having taken warm baths, went to obtain them at Sidon, was the cause of all the evil. He brought back the plague. Then terror seized upon the village. The peasants fled into the mountain with their cattle and their silk-worms; and there was no one to remove the dead bodies, which decomposed where they lay and increased the infection. The doctor, having no longer permission to cross the threshold of the monastery, communicated with Lady Hester through the window, and his servant Giovanni having fallen ill, he was also regarded as suspect and remained abandoned, with the agreeable prospect of doing his own cooking and washing his own dishes.

The month of May was by misfortune particularly hot. There were scenes which nothing will ever surpass in horror. A peasant of the name of Shahud lost his only son, whom he adored. He carried him himself to the common grave; but having loosened the stone and perceived the body of that accursed Constantine, he was seized with madness. He threw himself on the corpse to give it as food to the jackals. But death had done its work better; the limb by which he had intended to seize him remained in his hand. What a spectacle! Before the half-open charnel-house, this peasant, with distracted air, brandishing a piece of a corpse, curses and insults it while almost choking! And all around the beautiful and fresh country under the blue sky....

Then life resumes all its rights. The village forgot the death-rattle of the dying and resounded soon with songs and careless laughter. Constantine's eldest son, who had been about to be married, being dead, he was replaced immediately by his young brother. The bridegroom was only thirteen, and cast envious glances in the direction of the companions of his own age, who were dancing merrily, without looking at his wife, who was three years older than himself, it is true.

To recover from all these emotions, Lady Hester resolved to visit Baalbeck. She set out on October 18, and, from fear of the plague, she carried away provisions for the entire journey. She will not become an accomplished fatalist until many years afterwards.... She conceived even meat-puddings, which were theoretically to keep for several months and which set the teeth of the escort on edge, so invincible were their hardness and dryness! A thing decided upon being for her a thing done, the doctor was obliged to put up with the puddings, not without sadness. She had also the idea of travelling on donkeys, she and all her people. She had time to spare, and she was incensed at the complete oblivion in which her relatives and friends in England had left her. She thought in this way to attract the attention of the consuls and the merchants, and to make the disgrace of this equipage fall upon all those who ought to have watched over her welfare. A Pitt travelling on a donkey! What a bomb in Downing Street! Yes, but the absent go quickly.