Speaking Of Ibrahim Pasha, Lady Hester Said That He Was A Bold, Bad
Man, And Was Possessed Of Some Of Those Common And Wicked Magical
Arts Upon Which She Looked Down With So Much Contempt.
She said,
for instance, that Ibrahim's life was charmed against balls and
steel, and that after a battle he loosened the folds of his shawl
and shook out the bullets like dust.
It seems that the St. Simonians once made overtures to Lady Hester.
She told me that the Pere Enfantin (the chief of the sect) had sent
her a service of plate, but that she had declined to receive it.
She delivered a prediction as to the probability of the St.
Simonians finding the "mystic mother," and this she did in a way
which would amuse you. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to
mention this part of the woman's prophecies; why, I cannot tell,
but so it is, that she bound me to eternal secrecy.
Lady Hester told me that since her residence at Djoun she had been
attacked by a terrible illness, which rendered her for a long time
perfectly helpless; all her attendants fled, and left her to
perish. Whilst she lay thus alone, and quite unable to rise,
robbers came and carried away her property. {19} She told me that
they actually unroofed a great part of the building, and employed
engines with pulleys, for the purpose of hoisting out such of her
valuables as were too bulky to pass through doors. It would seem
that before this catastrophe Lady Hester had been rich in the
possession of Eastern luxuries; for she told me, that when the
chiefs of the Ottoman force took refuge with her after the fall of
Acre, they brought their wives also in great numbers. To all of
these Lady Hester, as she said, presented magnificent dresses; but
her generosity occasioned strife only instead of gratitude, for
every woman who fancied her present less splendid than that of
another with equal or less pretension, became absolutely furious:
all these audacious guests had now been got rid of, but the
Albanian soldiers, who had taken refuge with Lady Hester at the
same time, still remained under her protection.
In truth, this half-ruined convent, guarded by the proud heart of
an English gentlewoman, was the only spot throughout all Syria and
Palestine in which the will of Mehemet Ali and his fierce
lieutenant was not the law. More than once had the Pasha of Egypt
commanded that Ibrahim should have the Albanians delivered up to
him, but this white woman of the mountain (grown classical not by
books, but by very pride) answered only with a disdainful
invitation to "come and take them." Whether it was that Ibrahim
was acted upon by any superstitious dread of interfering with the
prophetess (a notion not at all incompatible with his character as
an able Oriental commander), or that he feared the ridicule of
putting himself in collision with a gentlewoman, he certainly never
ventured to attack the sanctuary, and so long as the Chatham's
granddaughter breathed a breath of life there was always this one
hillock, and that too in the midst of a most populous district,
which stood out, and kept its freedom. Mehemet Ali used to say, I
am told, that the Englishwoman had given him more trouble than all
the insurgent people of Syria and Palestine.
The prophetess announced to me that we were upon the eve of a
stupendous convulsion, which would destroy the then recognised
value of all property upon earth; and declaring that those only who
should be in the East at the time of the great change could hope
for greatness in the new life that was now close at hand, she
advised me, whilst there was yet time, to dispose of my property in
poor frail England, and gain a station in Asia. She told me that,
after leaving her, I should go into Egypt, but that in a little
while I should return into Syria. I secretly smiled at this last
prophecy as a "bad shot," for I had fully determined after visiting
the Pyramids to take ship from Alexandria for Greece. But men
struggle vainly in the meshes of their destiny. The unbelieved
Cassandra was right after all; the plague came, and the necessity
of avoiding the quarantine, to which I should have been subjected
if I had sailed from Alexandria, forced me to alter my route. I
went down into Egypt, and stayed there for a time, and then crossed
the desert once more, and came back to the mountains of the
Lebanon, exactly as the prophetess had foretold.
Lady Hester talked to me long and earnestly on the subject of
religion, announcing that the Messiah was yet to come. She strived
to impress me with the vanity and the falseness of all European
creeds, as well as with a sense of her own spiritual greatness:
throughout her conversation upon these high topics she carefully
insinuated, without actually asserting, her heavenly rank.
Amongst other much more marvellous powers, the lady claimed to have
one which most women, I fancy, possess namely, that of reading
men's characters in their faces. She examined the line of my
features very attentively, and told me the result, which, however,
I mean to keep hidden.
One favoured subject of discourse was that of "race," upon which
she was very diffuse, and yet rather mysterious. She set great
value upon the ancient French {20} (not Norman blood, for that she
vilified), but did not at all appreciate that which we call in this
country "an old family." She had a vast idea of the Cornish miners
on account of their race, and said, if she chose, she could give me
the means of rousing them to the most tremendous enthusiasm.
Such are the topics on which the lady mainly conversed, but very
often she would descend to more worldly chat, and then she was no
longer the prophetess, but the sort of woman that you sometimes
see, I am told, in London drawing-rooms - cool, decisive in manner,
unsparing of enemies, full of audacious fun, and saying the
downright things that the sheepish society around her is afraid to
utter.
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