An illustrious traveller, Maurice Barrès, was, a century later, in the course of that marvellous Enquête aux pays du Levant, wherein are resuscitated all the "obscure life," all the "religious heart of Asia," to penetrate in his turn into the depths of the Ansaries Mountains. He looked for traces of Lady Hester, and he passed over the ruins of the Kalaat el Kaf without knowing their tragic secret.
People murmured, afterwards, that the true authors of the crime had escaped; they were too powerful to be reached. No matter, the innocent had paid for the guilty. It was a form of Turkish justice of which Soliman rarely gave the example during his reign. Moreover, Lady Hester thanked him with that matchless grace which she knew how to display when she was pleased.
France did not forget the part which the noble Englishwoman had taken in the affair of Colonel Boutin. After a speech from the Comte Delaborde, the Chamber of Deputies addressed to her its thanks, and assured her of the gratitude of the country. The Courrier français devoted to her, in an article on Colonel Boutin, some moving lines:
"Colonel Boutin was splendidly received by Pitt's niece, Lady Hester Stanhope. Proud of her protection, he was on the point of succeeding in his mission when he was assassinated by the Arabs.... France knows how the murder of this illustrious traveller was avenged by her ladyship, who, by her influence alone and her personal efforts, demanded and obtained the heads of the assassins and the restoration of the luggage of the unfortunate officer."
Shortly after the Ansaries Mountains Expedition, the Princess of Wales arrived in Syria. Lady Hester had no kind of sympathy for her. Faugh! a woman so common, so vulgar, who exhibited herself like an Opera girl and fastened her garter below her knee, how detestable! In the famous quarrels which moved all England she had taken the side neither of the Prince of Wales, a dishonourable rake, nor of Princess Caroline, an impudent and slovenly German! Moreover, she judged it prudent, besides, to stay in the country for some time; the more so that the princess would undoubtedly have paid her a visit out of curiosity, and the expense of receiving her would have been very heavy. She embarked, therefore, on July 18, 1816. For where? No one in the world, save herself, would have had this idea. She went to take refuge in the midst of that very people whom she had just caused to be punished so cruelly. On the way, she bestowed her congratulations upon Mustapha Barbar at Tripoli. She disembarked at the little port of Bussyl, mounted a donkey and arrived at Antioch. Mr. Barker, who came to talk of her affairs, only remained with her a short time. She lived altogether alone, with some cowardly servants, in an abandoned house in the neighbourhood of Antioch. Absolute solitude. Superior people have regarded this attitude as comedy. It was a comedy which lasted seventy days, and might, at any moment, have had death as its epilogue! Who is the actor so stout of heart as to play it up to the end before empty benches?
Can the life of Lady Hester be imagined? The people of the country, by way of encouragement, made to dance around her all the victims of the Assassins. Round of honour in which hundreds who had been poisoned, stabbed, hanged, flayed, strangled, gave each other fraternally the hand. Well-intentioned friends warned her every morning that her life was in danger. As for her, she continued her long rides across the mountain. Sometimes, she halted in a hamlet, assembled the peasants, and informed them, if they did not yet know, that she was the Syt who had caused their relatives to be massacred and their villages to be burned. Then she made them a very impressive speech, telling them that she had avenged the death of a Frenchman, of an enemy of her country, because the cowardly murder of a traveller is an abominable deed which all noble hearts ought to condemn.
Then, it was the silence of the warm nights, the passing of the breeze which refreshed the gardens, the plaintive cry of some jackals quite close at hand. Nevertheless, not a hair fell from her head. The Englishwoman had conquered. The Assassins, astonished at meeting in a woman a contempt for death equal to their own, decided that to respect this life to which she seemed to attach no value would be for them a superior vengeance. They proved themselves, in this case, very profound philosophers. What a magnificent fate, in fact, would have been that of Lady Hester, "the Arab Amazon," according to Barbey d'Aurevilly, "who rode at the gallop out of European civilisation and English routine—that old circus where you turn in a ring—to reanimate her sensations in the peril and independence of the desert," if she had ended in blood in the mountains of the Assassins! She would have disappeared like a brilliant meteor, in the midst of her glory, in the midst of her fortune, leaving behind a trail of heroic legends. She would have escaped the slow agony of Djoun, where, overwhelmed by old age, oblivion and ill-health, she straightened her tall figure to make head against the pack of creditors and Jewish usurers, more filthy in Syria than anywhere else.
At the end of September, Lady Hester returned to Mar-Elias, unharmed. The Princess of Wales had concluded her lamentable journey in the Holy Land, dragging with her that Italian courier Bergami, whom she had bombarded in quick succession with the titles of Baron della Francina, Knight of Malta and Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and whom she had just appointed at Jerusalem Grand Master of St. Caroline, an order which she had created expressly for him, without taking into consideration the impropriety of her action.
Miss Williams and the doctor awaited Lady Hester anxiously. For Miss Williams had disembarked in Syria in March, 1816. Her attachment to her patroness was so great that she could not make up her mind to remain at a distance from her, and, after passing some years at Malta, she had left her sister and had, despite every difficulty—tempest, sea-sickness, mutiny of the crew and a passage of three and a half months—come to rejoin her. Lady Hester's lady's-maid, Ann Fry, awaited Miss Williams when she left the vessel, in order to veil her and to inculcate her with the first instructions relative to the new life. Such was Lady Hester's response to her devotion!
Amongst the visitors to Mar-Elias during that last year, the least commonplace was without question that young Mr. W. J. Bankes, who arrived full of stupid confidence in himself and with a conquering air. Lady Hester received him very amicably, and, learning that it was his intention to go to Palmyra, she gave him letters of recommendation to Muly Ishmael of Hama and to Nasr, son of the Emir of the Anezes. She also offered him old Pierre, who was always brought to the front when it was a question of choosing an experienced guide.