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.
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