The Secretary Told Me
That Their Rations, Including A Small Allowance Of Coffee And
Tobacco, Were Served Out To Them With Tolerable Regularity.
I asked the secretary how Lady Hester was off for horses, and said
that I would take a look at the stable.
The man did not raise any
opposition to my proposal, and affected no mystery about the
matter, but said that the only two steeds which then belonged to
her ladyship were of a very humble sort. This answer, and a storm
of rain then beginning to descend, prevented me at the time from
undertaking my journey to the stable, which was at some distance
from the part of the building in which I was quartered, and I don't
know that I ever thought of the matter afterwards until my return
to England, when I saw Lamartine's eye-witnessing account of the
horse saddled by the hands of his Maker!
When I returned to my apartment (which, as my hostess told me, was
the only one in the whole building that kept out the rain) her
ladyship sent to say that she would be glad to receive me again. I
was rather surprised at this, for I had understood that she reposed
during the day, and it was now little later than noon. "Really,"
said she, when I had taken my seat and my pipe, "we were together
for hours last night, and still I have heard nothing at all of my
old friends; now DO tell me something of your dear mother and her
sister; I never knew your father - it was after I left Burton
Pynsent that your mother married." I began to make slow answer,
but my questioner soon went off again to topics more sublime, so
that this second interview, which lasted two or three hours, was
occupied by the same sort of varied discourse as that which I have
been describing.
In the course of the afternoon the captain of an English man-of-war
arrived at Djoun, and her ladyship determined to receive him for
the same reason as that which had induced her to allow my visit,
namely, an early intimacy with his family. I and the new visitor,
who was a pleasant, amusing person, dined together, and we were
afterwards invited to the presence of my lady, with whom we sat
smoking and talking till midnight. The conversation turned
chiefly, I think, upon magical science. I had determined to be off
at an early hour the next morning, and so at the end of this
interview I bade my lady farewell. With her parting words she once
more advised me to abandon Europe and seek my reward in the East,
and she urged me too to give the like counsels to my father, and
tell him that "SHE HAD SAID IT."
Lady Hester's unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom
was, no doubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride most
perilously akin to madness, but I am quite sure that the mind of
the woman was too strong to be thoroughly overcome by even this
potent feeling. I plainly saw that she was not an unhesitating
follower of her own system, and I even fancied that I could
distinguish the brief moments during which she contrived to believe
in herself, from those long and less happy intervals in which her
own reason was too strong for her.
As for the lady's faith in astrology and magic science, you are not
for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of
intellect. She believed these things in common with those around
her, for she seldom spoke to anybody except crazy old dervishes,
who received her alms, and fostered her extravagancies, and even
when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into contact
with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained
uncontradicted. This entourage and the habit of fasting from books
and newspapers were quite enough to make her a facile recipient of
any marvellous story.
I think that in England we are scarcely sufficiently conscious of
the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides
over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about this
splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of
us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious, so that really
a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a
foolish belief about ghosts or witchcraft, or any other
supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the Leader of
the House of Commons. How different is the intellectual regime of
Eastern countries! In Syria and Palestine and Egypt you might as
well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of magic. There is
no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, the unanimous
belief of an ignorant people upon the mind of a stranger, is
extremely curious, and well worth noticing. A man coming freshly
from Europe is at first proof against the nonsense with which he is
assailed, but often it happens that after a little while the social
atmosphere in which he lives will begin to infect him, and if he
has been unaccustomed to the cunning of fence by which Reason
prepares the means of guarding herself against fallacy, he will
yield himself at last to the faith of those around him, and this he
will do by sympathy, it would seem, rather than from conviction. I
have been much interested in observing that the mere "practical
man," however skilful and shrewd in his own way, has not the kind
of power that will enable him to resist the gradual impression made
upon his mind by the common opinion of those whom he sees and hears
from day to day. Even amongst the English (whose good sense and
sound religious knowledge would be likely to guard them from error)
I have known the calculating merchant, the inquisitive traveller,
and the post-captain, with his bright, wakeful eye of command - I
have known all these surrender themselves to the REALLY magic-like
influence of other people's minds.
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