In this eddying of eccentric ideas, the doctor did not see any trace of projects favourable to a return to Europe. Six years of peregrinations across the East had surfeited his taste for travel, and six years of solitude—solitude mitigated, it is true, by the passing of foreigners of distinction—with even a superior woman, had made him hungry for social life and worldly pleasures. Being circumspect, he ventured lightly on the burning ground of a probable return. Lady Hester loved the unexpected; she listened, smiled, approved and sent dare-dare Giorgio to find a medical man in England willing to come to her. She even gave the doctor permission to make a tour in Egypt. He passed two months there and met Sheik Ibraham Burckhardt. At Alexandria, his joy exploded noisily in regard to the splendid parties and evening conversaziones, and that without the least remorse. Had he not left at Mar-Elias a substitute doctor worthy of all confidence, a certain Signor Volpi. This Italian, formerly in Holy Orders, had taken advantage of the Revolution to throw off the cowl and to dance with enthusiasm round the tree of Liberty. This occupation not being sufficiently lucrative, he embarked for Syria, having taken care to provide himself with a syringe and a sugar-loaf hat, these insignia being necessary to be well received. Lady Hester often appealed to his judgments on humanity in general.
The calm in which the doctor was delighting was abruptly broken so soon as he returned from Egypt by one of those storms so heavy with threats in which the caprices of Lady Hester excelled.
From Tripoli to Antioch, between the Orontes and the sea, there runs a chain of ragged and gloomy mountains, the Ansaries Mountains. Bald rocks, dark and musty ravines, fallen ground retained by stunted trees twisting themselves into an eternal spasm, chaos and ruins. To these wild and enigmatical landscapes, which are covered by miasmas risen from the marshes and the ponds, from corpses of men and animals which decompose side by side, chosen inhabitants are necessary. In the Ansaries Mountains lived the Assassins (Hashishim)! The Assassins! Obscure association, vast freemasonry, surrounded by the hatred of all peoples, both Christians and Moslems, seeking the ruin of Islam, mysterious sect which mingles, in blood and poison, the most ascetic mysticism, the most ridiculous charlatanism and the most implacable cruelty.
Ah! how the recollections of history haunt those deep gorges which gash and wound the earth and furrow it with wounds, the lips of which seems to draw together the better to preserve their terrible secret!
It is in these narrow valleys, where the light creeps in like a spectre; amidst these lofty crags which time carries away joyously by scraps, that the fierce mountaineers so feared by the troops of the Sultan are entrenched. They are tributaries of the Pachas of Tripoli and Damascus, but their obedience is uncertain, and no collector of taxes dares to get himself involved on their great tracks which end often in a cul-de-sac. Misfortune follows the imprudent person who would venture into the mountain! From castles encamped on the edge of abysses death would descend. And not the violent and honourable death which a combat, even an unequal one, gives, but the unforeseen, insidious death which slowly scents the victim, watches him unweariedly and awaits him in the perfume of a poisoned nosegay, in the clear water of a contaminated spring, in the most impressive cares of a servant who has sold himself. Kalaat Masjaf! Kalaat Quadinous! Kalaat el Kaf! eagles' nests hewn in the living rock, which have an ugly appearance and a sinister memory, lair of bandits where lived, meditated and died that strange Rachid-eddin-Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, who brought from Persia the doctrine of blood and of crime, inspirer of souls, who fanaticised his men up to the love of, the adoration of, death, awakening their energies and casting a spell over their wills up to the most degraded and the most humiliating passivity.
At a distance of seven centuries, the Assassins had not disarmed, and each day brought a new incident to add to their monotonous and sanguinary chronicles. Nevertheless, it was them whom Lady Hester was going to defy, them who had everywhere secret affiliations, everywhere spies, them who knew everything, avenged themselves always and so much the more dangerously that they were totally indifferent to their own lives and considered as an ineffable happiness to die for their cause.
The reason Lady Hester had was a grave one: in the nineteenth century a European traveller could disappear in the Ansaries Mountains without anyone being called to account.
On March 28, 1814, a Frenchman arrived at Sidon and lodged with his consul, M. Taitbout. He was Colonel Boutin, a great friend of Moreau and a very distinguished officer of engineers, who had received the delicate mission of preparing and sounding the ground in the East. Lady Hester had met him at Cairo, and during a dinner party she had turned into ridicule the mysterious air which he affected and had laughingly denounced him as a spy of Bonaparte. One remembers the frightful epidemic of plague in the spring of 1814. In vain Colonel Boutin's friends endeavoured to keep him at Sidon, but he was in a hurry and he left on April 6, leaving as a deposit in trust at Mar-Elias some of his manuscripts. Lady Hester had given him one of her servants, a sure guide and well acquainted with the regions the traveller was to pass through; but unhappily he was carried off by the plague. Colonel Boutin quitted Hama for Latakia. He had informed M. Guys, consul at that town, that he would abandon the ordinary route, which ran northwards so far as Djesrech Chogh, to cut across the Ansaries Mountains. He started—and no one had ever heard of him since.
M. Guys awaited him at first patiently; then he became alarmed. The report of his disappearance reached Lady Hester. She thought that the pachas were going to institute a rigorous inquiry, but the pachas feared too much the famous Assassins to raise a little finger in favour of a foreigner so foolish as to throw himself voluntarily into the wolf's mouth. The months passed. Then Lady Hester made up her mind abruptly. In the East, all travellers are brothers; differences of race and national enmities are abolished. She took in hand the case of Colonel Boutin, whom personally she held, besides, in high esteem. The affair was going all at once to rebound and drag from their tranquillity the unpunished murderers.
In haste, she drew up her plans. An inquiry, in the rotten heart of the Ansaries country, was difficult, impossible. A silence of a year had thickened the mystery. No matter, it would be necessary for her to bring the affair to a head, and she will bring it to a head. All the blood of the Pitts was boiling in this woman, who had truly received from Heaven the gift of command. She chose three men who possessed her confidence: Signor Volpi was sent to Hama. Soliman, a bold and resolute Druse muleteer, and Pierre, recalled from Deiv el Kammar, where he was keeping an inn, started to repeat Colonel Boutin's journey, disguised as old pedlars. They succeeded in their mission, and in October, 1815, when the doctor disembarked from Egypt, he learned that the proofs which had been collected were conclusive, and that the pacha was to be summoned to act. The doctor made the mistake of not being enthusiastic and of talking of revenge, of danger in the future when Lady Hester went riding. Let him not speak in that manner; she will do without him!