Not being able to find in Egypt the facilities he desired to embark for India, he proceeded to Syria, with the intention of joining the caravan which left Damascus for Bassora. But he fell dangerously ill at Acre. His intellectual faculties, affected by so many extraordinary events, broke down in an alarming fashion. He was seized by a religious exaltation and by an unfortunate devotion, for he distributed to his neighbours the money which remained to him. And Loustaunau lived on alms in a miserable hut in the orchards of Acre. "The Lion of the State and the Tiger in war" wandered miserably across the country. Having retained, the recollection of the brilliant part which prophecies had played in his splendid past, he was seized with a passion for the Bible, and made it his study to find a link between present events and ancient narrations. People called him "the prophet" and respected his inoffensive folly.
On learning of the arrival of Lady Hester, he had hastened to her, armed with a thousand sacred texts announcing her coming. He imagined, besides, that she was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he was not embarrassed to give another direction to his prophecies. Lady Hester received him very cordially, divining immediately what marvellous advantage she might derive, not from his flashes of lucidity which revealed the keen good sense of the peasant, lofty sentiments and an astonishing memory, but from his Biblical extravagances. In consequence, she bestowed upon him alms in abundance. Mentally, she already relegated Pierre to the rank of minor prophet.
Loustaunau withdrew soon in torrents of rain. The tents were overturned like umbrellas, and Lady Hester had two narrow escapes of being buried under her own. But it was said that that evening the doctor did not have a moment's respite and that the march past of frightened people did not cease. Towards midnight they came to inform him that a Frank had arrived from Acre. He hastened into the dining-tent and found a young Dalmatian who was about to put on the uniform of an officer of the British Navy. Signor Thomaso Coschich—he bore this sonorous name—explained with much importance and volubility that he had been dragoman to the Princess of Wales during her journey from Palermo to Constantinople; that he had crossed the Mediterranean, in the midst of war, on a walnut-shell, so well that the fishermen of Cyprus had not recovered from their astonishment, and that he had come to find Lady Hester to take her back to England.
Then he handed to the dumbfounded doctor despatches from Sir Sydney Smith, of the highest importance, and which would not suffer any delay. Lady Stanhope was charged to transmit several letters to the Emir Bechir. There were many things in these letters, in truth. Sir Sydney Smith began by reproaching the emir harshly with having allowed the eyes of his nephews to be put out (Bechir had charged himself with the business). "I hope," wrote he, "that you will not deprive them of your protection; I hold you responsible to me for their safety." He demanded the 15,000 men which Bechir had promised to furnish to hunt down the pirates of Algiers. He sent him their banners and the plans of campaign approved by Austria, Russia, Prussia, France, the Emperor of Morocco and the Dey of Tunis—nothing except that. Finally, being very much in debt and in a most precarious situation, he reckoned on Lady Hester, his dear cousin, to obtain a little loan from her Syrian friends!
Lady Hester, congratulating herself on having put her nose into this correspondence, which smelt of powder, suspended for three days the march of the caravan, in order to compose her answers and to get rid as quickly as possible of the embarrassing personality of Thomaso Coschich. This imbecile, in order to get the gates of Acre to open to him during the night, had declared that war was about to be declared between Russia and Turkey, and that, as England was taking an important part in it, he was to conduct Lady Hester to a place of safety. True Knight of Fortune, indiscreet, noisy, quarrelsome, swollen with vanity, loud in bragging, his rodomontades produced a disastrous effect on the Turks, who rarely understand pleasantry and never ridicule.
Lady Hester decided to put a stop to the negotiations and wrote to Sir Sydney Smith that his idea was stupid; that Bechir had too many enemies to deprive himself of 15,000 men like that; that his men did not fight well except with their mountains behind them, which they would not consent to leave; that it was impossible, however, to carry them away with them, and that, moreover, as Bechir possessed no port, he would have to obtain the authorisation of the Pacha of Acre to embark them. And, alluding to the frightful banners in German cotton-cloth which Sir Sydney Smith had sent, she inquired who was the king of pocket-handkerchiefs.
Beyond that, she immediately despatched copies of Sir Sydney Smith's letters and her own to Mr. Liston (Constantinople) and Mr. Barker (Aleppo), begging the latter to stop all the letters which he might suppose were coming from Sir Sydney Smith to the Emir Bechir. Bechir made faces at the passage relating to his nephews, but he broke out into a cold sweat when he thought of all the vexations which the absurd intervention of the Commodore might have brought upon him but for the prudent and circumspect conduct of Lady Hester. The Porte was not to be trifled with when an alliance with European nations was in question, and his head would have leaped like a cork.
As for the presents, they denoted a complete misunderstanding of the customs, policy and religions of the East. Sir Sydney Smith sent Abu Gosh a pair of pistols—at a time when the Turks, when they received arms from England, wanted English arms—the Emir Bechir, a black satin abaye—it was just as though someone had offered Sir Sydney Smith a pair of cretonne breeches—to his wife a work-basket; to the library of Jerusalem (there was not one) a Bible; to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a portrait of the Pope, when all the sects which were tearing away the Holy Places had nothing in common except their quarrels.
The Emir Bechir received the presents graciously, but did not exhibit them, nor did he ever speak of them, and it is probable that his sons no longer demanded news of Sir Sydney Smith from all travelling Europeans at Beit-ed-Dui, as they had done up to the present.
At Jaffa, a firman of Soliman ordered Mohammed Aga to accompany Lady Hester. How he would have liked to transfer the duty to another! For Lady Hester, remembering his apathy in 1812, treated him with the most utter disdain, crushing him beneath a contempt fallen from very high, opposing a wooden countenance to all his advances. It was an antipathy justified by the vile and base character of Mohammed. He had always been protected by Soliman, who had appointed him to Jaffa. Some months later, the Pacha of Tripoli being dead, Soliman demanded this dignity for his favourite. The Grand Vizier received at the same time a despatch from Mohammed, who demanded the place occupied by Soliman, who, he wrote, was "incapable, old and an invalid." The Vizier contented himself by sending this letter to Soliman, with these words: "That is the man for whom you demand the title of pacha with two tails!"