The plain of the Bekaa brought them comfortably to Baalbeck. The camp was pitched beyond the town, at the springs of the Litani. From Ras-el-Aia the travellers contemplated one of the most beautiful districts of Asia, and every evening they found a new charm. In the distance, the great white sheik, the solemn Hermon, the slopes of the Lebanon, the deep and quiet valley showing the harmony of its verdure, wearied and fatigued by the summer, around the Temple of Baal, the six columns light, exquisite, fragile and, nevertheless, living symbol of strength and eternity. And to give to this country of light a more human beauty, tents scattered at the foot of a mosque and long flocks of reddish and grey sheep coming to drink.
What were Lady Hester's feelings? What reflections assailed her when she walked in the Acropolis, traversing the courts surrounded by exedras, encountering the capitals in rose-coloured granite of Hassouan, the lustral basins with sculptures so delicate that the tritons and the chariots appeared cameos, passing under the compartment-ceilings of the Temple of Bacchus, halting, in astonishment, before the principal arch of the door, of which the audacious jet cleaves the sky, before the walls where, amongst the stone lacework, are found everywhere the egg and the arrow, emblem of life and of death?
The doctor is a confidant too discreet. His personal taste leads him to deplore the gigantic stones which form the sub-basement of the temple. He does not like the Trilithon! He finds that the colossal dimensions of the three monoliths are not in harmony with the rest of the edifice and destroy all symmetry! But it is an opinion in which he stands quite alone.
He was not able to resist the pleasure of writing on the walls of the temple some verses in honour of Lady Hester:
Quam multa antiquis sunt his incisa columuni
Nomina! cum saxo mox peritura simul,
Sed tu nulla times oblivia; fama superstes,
Esther, si pereant marmora, semper erit!
The intention was amiable, if the result were mediocre. But Lady Hester caused them to be effaced promptly.
"I have made it a rule," said she to him more frankly than courteously, "since I entered Society, never to allow people to write verses about me. If I had been willing, I should have had thousands of poets to celebrate me in every way, but I consider there is nothing so ridiculous. Look at the Duchess of Devonshire, who receives every morning a sonnet on her drive, an impromptu on her headache, and a crowd of other absurdities. I abominate that sort of thing."
The doctor took it for granted.
The weather suddenly changed, and on November 7 the caravan started for the Neck of Cedars, which the snows were threatening to obstruct. The travellers were swept by one of those frightful storms of which the countries of the East possess the secret; tents torn down, lanterns and fires extinguished, the mountain shaken and trembling, howling of the wind. The muleteers prudently vanished, fearing a night service. They crossed the neck at last, leaving on their right the cedars to which the doctor compares those of Warwick, scarcely less beautiful, and descended on the villages of Becherre and Ehden, by a straight passage which would have frightened many expert horsemen. Some miles from Ehden, there was, in the middle of the mountain, clinging to the rock, suspended above the abyss in which the Nadicha rumbles, a famous monastery, the Monastery of St. Anthony. Miracles were there more specially reserved for epileptics and the mentally afflicted; but St. Anthony was far more indebted for his celebrity to the violent and implacable hostility which he showed towards all representatives of the weak sex without exception. The Moslems ought to venerate a saint so judicious. Not only had no woman ever passed the threshold of the convent, but female animals themselves were rigorously shut up, from fear of their mingling with the privileged males in the forbidden precincts. It was this reason which decided Lady Hester to make a détour in order to go to brave a saint so little gallant. She invited the superior in her own convent, associating with him, for form's sake, some sheiks of the village, and making a courteous allusion to the firman of the Sultan which gave her the right to enter every place. She went to the monastery mounted on a she-ass—double sacrilege! When she entered the court, all the onlookers, monks and servants, expected the earth to open under the feet of the impudent women to swallow her up. But all passed off excellently, and she visited the monastery from top to bottom. At every door there was a violent altercation which threatened to turn to fisticuffs between the feminist and anti-feminist clans of the monks. The meal was long and plentiful. St. Anthony lost his prestige; that of Lady Hester increased in proportion.
Tripoli, where Lady Hester occupied, for several months, an uninhabited convent of the Capuchins, had as military governor Mustafa Aga Barbar. Of very low origin, the son of a muleteer, he had, at the head of a band of resolute fellows, captured the fortress of the town by surprise. The people, who detested the janissaries, had risen in revolt with him, and a firman of the Porte confirmed him in the post which he had usurped, for in the East the strongest reason is always the best. He received Lady Hester with a homely simplicity which contrasted with the stiff politeness of the Turks. She made on him a lasting impression.