FAR NIENTE AT DAMASCUS
ON August 27, 1812, Lady Hester had left Deir-el-Kammar, edified on the
subject of Eastern hospitality. The Emir Bechir had supplied all the
requirements of her table with great magnificence, it is true, but had
caused a hint to be conveyed to her, by one of his intimates, that he
expected a present of equivalent value. It cost her 2000 piastres,
pieces of brocade and gratuities to all the servants, from the
major-domo to the meanest scullion, and they formed a tribe! She left
disgusted by an invitation which had cost her so dear. As for the horse
with which Bechir had presented her, one which the doctor had admired,
he was vicious, and Lady Hester got rid of him, to the profit of the
janissary.
Bruce, in company with one of the two Bertrands--one does not know
which--had started for Aleppo, after having uselessly endeavoured to
take his friend. Lady Hester screened her refusal behind her contempt
for the Levantine race, neither Turkish nor European, which inhabited
this town. The true reason was much more personal: she simply was afraid
of catching the Aleppo pimple, that facetious ulcer which chooses as a
rule a prominent part of the face, nose or cheek, to lay there its
hideous scar. A woman, even though she wears breeches, attaches
importance to her face. And this little weakness brings Lady Hester
nearer to her poor sex.... She had written to the Pacha of Damascus to
inform him of her desire to visit his capital, and he had sent her a
page with a most courteous invitation.
Was not Damascus the Porte of the Desert, and had not Lady Hester
already the project, still vague as to the means, but certain as to the
end, of making a little stay amongst the wandering Bedouin tribes?
The caravan journeyed slowly; the news which the page had brought did
not stimulate rapidity; there was revolution at Damascus, where the
commandant of the troops had refused to recognise Sayd Soliman, the new
pacha. He was shut up in the citadel, and blood was flowing in streams
in the streets.
The travellers occupied four days in traversing the Lebanon and the
Anti-Lebanon. Pierre's stories diverted the evenings. In proportion as
they climbed, the air was charged with aromatic effluvia and icy
breaths. At the summit of their route, they perceived all at once the
plain of the Bekaa, which, like a long serpent, unrolls its green rings,
writhes and lies down between two mountain barriers. The Litami traced a
furrow of sombre tint, and the plain with its fresh herbage was a
pleasure to behold. The parallel tops of the two Lebanons were tawny and
red; the parched earth was cracking under the midday heat. And to the
South, Hermon rose victoriously, like a great sherbet, to the eternal
snows on the plateau glittering with light. To the North, a jet of
light, which Lady Stanhope recognised as Baalbeck: the temple of the sun
was saluting its god.
At last, excellent news arrived from Damascus: the rebel age had been
strangled and order was entirely restored. After halts at the village of
Djbb-Djenin and Dimas, the travellers stopped at the gardens of
Damascus. The gardens of Damascus! Fêtes and orgies of apricot-trees,
orange-trees and pomegranate-trees, succumbing beneath the exuberance of
the vines, whose heavy and juicy grapes fell so far as the ground. The
river with its seven branches chanted the joy of living, and the song of
the waters was full of voluptuousness, refreshing and boundless.
The doctor started in advance to prepare the way and to hire a house in
the Christian quarter. Then he returned, thoughtful, to meet Lady
Hester. Thoughtful! There was occasion for it.
Damascus was still a town closed to Europeans. The fanaticism was freely
developed and imposed its laws on the governors too benevolent towards
foreigners. The length of the Syrian coasts, the relations of commerce,
to which the Arabs attached extreme importance owing to the profit which
they derived from it, and the authority of the consuls--whom they
believed powerful and supported by their countries--had brought a
certain tolerance. But Damascus, forbidden fruit, was concealed far
inland, guarded by the double ramparts of the Lebanon, by solid walls,
and particularly the desert, which came to die at its feet like a silent
sea.
The few travellers who had visited it, and whom Lady Hester had met at
Cairo or in the towns of the coast, had strongly dissuaded her from
attempting an adventure of which the result might be tragic and which
certainly would remain perilous.
"Think," said they to her, "that a man cannot even enter Damascus in
European costume without being insulted. Think that the Christians, if
they dared to ride on horseback in the streets of the town, would be
maltreated to such a degree that death would be the consequence. And you
intend, you, a woman, a European, to enter Damascus on horseback and
with your face uncovered! But it is madness!"
The pacha's page had on several occasions hinted to the interpreter, one
of the two Bertrands, that Lady Hester ought to veil herself to enter
Damascus in order to avoid irritating the populace. For, in case of a
riot, he knew well that the pacha, whose authority was much disputed,
would not be able to afford her protection.
M. Bertrand nearly succumbed with horror on learning from the mouth of
her ladyship herself that it was her intention to brave Damascene
opinion by exhibiting herself in this costume, and in broad daylight.
Lady Hester was courageous. The unforeseen, even charged with threats,
smiled upon her. And, above all, she was able to accomplish something
great which no one had ever attempted before her. Pitt's niece had
always turned up her nose at whatever people might say.
"Whatever people may say of me in England, I do not care more than
that," declared she to the doctor, snapping her fingers. "Whatever
horrible things all these crooked-minded persons may think, do not
trouble me more than if they spat at the sun. That falls back on their
noses and all the harm is for them. They are like midges on the tail of
an artillery horse. They murmur, and they come and go, and they buzz all
around. The great explosion comes! boom! and all are dispersed."
Only she knew well that the Moslems are not satisfied with buzzing and
murmuring, and that they would not recoil before bloodshed to obtain
vengeance upon her who dared thus to defy their most sacred customs. But
is there not at the bottom of the actions which appear the most
heroically disinterested a certain sentiment of the gallery which
stimulates vanity and renders it more bold? And if one had told Lady
Hester that the fame of her exploits would never reach England, would
she not have recoiled at the last moment.
On September 1, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Lady Hester passed the
gates of Damascus at the head of eighteen horsemen and some twenty mules
heavily loaded. In the narrow streets a considerable crowd gathered. It
hurried towards the cavalcade, and all eyes were turned towards the
person who appeared to be the chief of it.
The pacha's page was uneasy; M. Bertrand trembled, and the doctor was
not in high spirits. A word, a cry, a gesture, and the people who
surrounded the escort had only to draw their thick ranks closer, and the
travellers would have been delivered to them defenceless. But, deceived
by the dazzling costume and the masculine countenance of Lady Hester,
some took her for a young bey still beardless; others, believing that
they were dreaming, discovered that it was a woman; but before they had
recovered from their astonishment, she had already passed. Thus she
alighted safe and sound in the Christian quarter.
It is then that her indomitable character asserted itself; she did not
rest until her household had been transported into the heart of the
Mohammedan quarter. "I intend to take the bull by the horns and to
settle down under the minaret of the grand mosque," declared she
cavalierly to the doctor, who was very troubled at this new caprice.
Scarcely forty-eight hours after her arrival, furnished with an order
from the pacha, she visited, without putting herself to inconvenience,
the best residences in the town, and fixed her choice upon a sumptuous
habitation near the palace and the bazaars, formerly the residence of a
Capugi Bachi (envoy of the Porte for confidential missions, such as
strangulations, confiscations and so forth). A narrow passage led to a
marble court, where two bronze serpents, coiled around a lemon-tree,
diffused water clear as crystal. The apartments were small and
sumptuous.
The Christian owner of the empty house, his appetite excited by the
sight of Lady Hester's suite, showed long teeth and a bill infinitely
longer still. The smallest glass of lemonade was thus marked: "Sherbet
for the arrival of the Queen." The doctor was obliged to curb his
enthusiasm.
Lady Hester inaugurated very quickly her new Eastern policy, which was
to flatter the Turks in order to make allies of them. Thus, the
superiors of the Franciscan and Capuchin monasteries came to offer her
their services, as they did to all passing travellers. And she caused
them to be informed that, living in a Mohammedan quarter, she respected
its rules, and begged them not to repeat their visit. The monks
complied with this rather cool request.
She received, on the other hand, a French doctor, M. Chaboceau, seventy
years of age, deaf as a post, who, entering all the harems, was not a
little compromising.
This Chaboceau had known Volney at the time of his residence at
Damascus; he had even lodged him. And he energetically asserted that
_Volney had not been at Palmyra_. A snowstorm had prevented him from
undertaking his journey. This fact is curious, and renders rather
piquant the _Méditations sur les mines et les révolutions des
empires_. Did Volney content himself with the descriptions of Wood and
of Dawkins to inspire his emphatic invocations? "The contemplation of
solitudes which has aided him to interrogate the universality of people"
may then be subject to some caution.
Thus, by radical measures, by discreet praises uttered before those who
were able best to propagate them, by backsheesh skilfully distributed,
she gained the good graces of the mob and became very quickly popular.
When she mounted her horse, there was an assemblage before her door.
Accompanied by little Giorgio, her interpreter, and her janissary
Mohammed, she placed herself entirely at the discretion of the
inhabitants during her rides through the town. At the beginning, the
doctor feared a mishap, but he was reassured on beholding the respect
which was caused by her proud and dignified bearing and her agreeable,
if reserved, manner. Soon the fierce Damascenes felt themselves
conquered. They sprinkled coffee under her horse's feet, in accordance
with custom, in order to do her honour. Tempted by the piastres which
she distributed as her smiles, they lay in wait for her departure and
her return to shout as she passed: "Long life to her!... May she live to
return to her own country!"
Admiration increased in the mob, which whispered in confidence that,
although she was of English birth, she was descended from the Turks and
had Mohammedan blood in her veins. Her paleness accredited the legend.
Never had the lily whiteness of her skin and the clearness of her
complexion been so much vaunted. Already in Egypt her moonlight face had
conquered hearts. For the warm rosy carnation plays no part in Eastern
beauty. The Turks regard the red faces of Englishwomen as hideous. In
which connection an amusing anecdote was related to Lady Hester:
During the evacuation of Egypt in 1805, the English soldiers forgot some
women--as if by chance--whom the Turks seized. Their new lovers washed
them and rewashed them, in the hope of removing that horrible brick
colour which spoiled their cheeks. The result was worse.... The more
they rubbed, the more flamboyant the colours became: tomatoes ready to
fry. When they saw that there was nothing to be done, they sent them
about their business. "We know and we admire white and black women,"
said they, "but red women up to the present we have not heard them
spoken of."
One day, when she was passing through the _souks_, all the people rose
at her approach, as at the passing of the Sultan. Her heart swollen with
victorious joy, she advanced slowly, she advanced regretfully, into that
fairyland, which was soon going to disappear for always. Shining silks,
brocades wrought with salmon-pink roses, veils of Baghdad, cloths of
Hama, damask with silver flowers, slippers of red leather, Arab saddles
decorated with mother-of-pearl and tawny studs, carpets in warm and
palpitating tones.... And, eagerly, she saw pass by, standing out on
this strange scene like living chains which bound her to the dream, the
tall Bedouins draped in their brown abayes, fierce of aspect and supple
as panthers of the jungle, the Jews with their dirty curls and their
bent figures, hiding a clandestine booty from the tax-gatherer, the
Turks, embroidered and re-embroidered with gold over all the seams, and
the Christians, neutral and sad, and the Druses in half-mourning, and
the Maronites.... From time to time an Aga broke through the crowd, with
protruding chest, full-blown and fat body in his furred pelisse, like a
pot of lard surrounded by dust, followed by fifteen slaves carrying his
narghileh and his smoking apparatus. Long lines of veiled women under
the guardianship of a duenna or of an old eunuch, flight of swans led by
a duck.
It was Ramadan. So soon as the sun, in his daily farewell, had stained
with blood the sand-dunes outside the town, life took possession of
Damascus. Immediately the lamps were lit in the most beautiful mosques,
for in this Orient which is all violence, shock and contrast one knows
not the delicate charm of the mauve hours in which the twilight is born.
Lady Hester sauntered through the crowded by-streets. The waters of the
Barada reflected in commas of gold the illuminations of the little
cafés which opened on to its steep banks. Songs rose from the
_moucharabys_, whose distant lights traced the designs of legends.
Behind a mysterious wall viols lamented, those seven-stringed viols
which retain for a long time the melancholy notes. The shops of the
vendors of eatables were in a wild ferment: plates loaded with cakes
dripping with honey and grease, juicy halawys, loaves flat as
handkerchiefs, little skewers of birds roasted whole. On the threshold
of his kingdom, naked down to the waist, a fat negro rolled without
shame forcemeat balls on his belly. Odour of grilled mutton, of fresh
pasties, of burned almonds, of ginger, of canella!
Tumult of buyers! Confusion at the crossways! Theatre of Chinese shadows
recounting the inevitable story: illness of a lady, her desire to have a
Frank doctor, thoughtlessness of the doctor, jealousy of the husband and
speedy catastrophe.
In the cafés, the Damascenes, gravely squatting in a heap on rustic
carpets, smoke the narghileh or suck in the tiny cups of coffee perfumed
with ambergris. If the customers were thirsty, they stopped on his way a
water-carrier, a djoullab seller or a vendor of raisins. Sometimes a
storyteller presented himself and began a story of "The Thousand and One
Nights," in which figured marvellous houris and one-eyed giants. He
went, came, gesticulated, varying his voice with an infinite art,
transforming the expressions of his face with a skill which the most
famous of our actors would not attain. Sometimes they listened to him,
sometimes he talked for himself alone, and his pleasure was as keen as
though he were playing before the Sultan. Ah! who will restore to Lady
Hester those long luminous nights of Ramadan with the charm of new
scenes and exotic perfumes never lost later?
One evening, Lady Hester was informed that the pacha awaited her. Rash
enterprise for a woman who had a soul less firm. She passed with an
assured step--with an assured stride--through the ante-chambers of the
palace, where the flames of the torches shone on the weapons of the
soldiers and the motionless guards. She entered an immense hall, walking
through a double hedge of officers and janissaries in full dress, naked
scimitars in their hands. Silence terrible and oppressive. The steel
threw flashes of light. And, at the very end, on a sofa of crimson
satin, a little man with an air haughty and glacial, who, without
rising, signed to her to be seated. Lady Hester was in no way
disconcerted, and all these glances of men, ardent and sombre, did not
displease her. By her side stood the Jew Malem Rafael--brother of Malem
Hazm--and M. Bertrand. Little Giorgio, who had been brought to check the
translations of the interpreters, had been stopped at the door because
he carried arms, a discourtesy as notorious as to wear boots on an
official visit in England.
M. Bertrand was far from being as much at his ease as was his intrepid
mistress. He would certainly have preferred to be the other Bertrand, he
who was travelling on the road to Aleppo; his teeth chattered with fear,
and he was a long time before being able to speak intelligibly.
Lady Hester presented Sayd Soliman Pacha with a very valuable snuff-box,
and withdrew at the end of a reasonable time, which seemed mortally long
to her interpreter. The pacha sent her a horse shortly afterwards. After
all these visits, her stable was beginning to be supplied.
Scarcely had she returned, when her janissary Mohammed said to her:
"Her ladyship's reception has been great."
"Yes, but all that is only vanity," answered she.
"Oh, my lady!" cried he, delighted, "thou bearest on thy forehead the
splendour of a king and the humility of a dervish at the bottom of thy
heart."
The doctor made the round of the harems of the town to physic the
beautiful Turkish women. Every day his house was besieged by blind men
imperiously demanding eyes; consumptives, a lung; lame men, a straight
leg; hunchbacks, a flat back. Most of the time, these patients desired
to catch a glimpse of Lady Hester, and, their curiosity satisfied, they
went to throw into the Barada the doctor's powders. But he had sick
persons more serious. Ahmed Bey, of one of the most important families
of the town, son of Abdallah, ex-Pacha of Damascus, sent for him to
attend his son, a little boy of thirteen, ugly, rickety and deformed,
and afflicted with an intermittent fever. All the resources of the
Damascene medical art had been employed without effect. He had been sewn
up in the skin of a sheep which had just been flayed; he had swallowed
powdered pearls; he had had his feet covered by still warm pigeons. All
without result.
The doctor, who had his neglected cures on his mind, required pressing
at first. Then he operated and succeeded in curing the poor child. The
father, overjoyed, offered him a complete outfit for the bath; very
costly robe of honour to be put on on leaving the water, coffee, pipes
and sherbets. These thanks in the Eastern fashion were completed by a
rustic fête in the orchards which skirt the Barada.
But the treasure, the jewel of Damascus, was Fatimah, flower of beauty
without rival. Her body of pure and graceful outline bore, like a
half-opened corolla, the head small and delicate, the face pale and
ardent, in which the great shadowy eyes extended themselves
mysteriously. And her black hair, of a velvety and bluish black,
descended in tresses, entangled with diamonds and gold pesetas, so far
as her bare feet. The doctor thought seriously for a moment of
renouncing his faith to espouse this adorable creature. Poor doctor! he
was not made of the same stuff as a Turkish husband at the head of a
riotous harem. Will he consider one day his astonished eyes and his
sheeplike and gentle manner? In short, he remained on the border of
danger. Lady Hester, on her side, associated with the Turks of rank. One
of her friends received her in the midst of his harem: harem of a noble,
four wives and three mistresses! None of these women were seated in the
master's presence; they stood in a corner of the drawing-room, and did
not mount the estrade on which he sat except to fill his pipe and serve
his coffee. At dinner, they handed the dishes themselves, never speaking
except when their lord asked them a question. "And yet," said Lady
Hester, "he is one of the most charming and most agreeable men I know.
Towards me he is very gentlemanly and as attentive and courteous as no
matter who!" We suspect with what kind of eye these seven women must
have regarded the intrusion of this gigantic foreign woman!
As she was visiting the wife of an effendi who had gathered together
some fifty ladies to do her honour, the master all at once entered. They
veiled themselves hurriedly, and he dispersed them with a brusque
gesture. Remaining alone with Lady Hester, he told her that he had
informed her dragoman, who shortly afterwards appeared. He kept her to
supper in a marble court with groves of orange-trees. Immense gold
candelabra bore candles six feet high, and little lamps suspended in
clusters from the arcades were mirrored in the water of the basin.
Negroes, admirably trained, waited. The effendi talked about astronomy
and sent for a bulky book, concerning which he asked a thousand
questions.
Strange and very significant picture, that of this Turk forsaking his
harem to converse with Lady Hester about the celestial constellations
and to talk with her of unknown planets. Did it not seem to her that she
was descending from one of those inaccessible stars! And what abyss can
be more profound, what distance can be more immeasurable, than that
which separates beings kneaded by centuries of civilisation from those
in whom the barbarian still sleeps? He, who up to that time had regarded
women under the different aspects of a desire unceasingly awakened and
unceasingly satisfied, here is he learning in turn respect, admiration,
deference, here is he beginning to catch a glimpse of the equality of
the sexes and the parity of their complex intelligences!
Little Giorgio, on his knees for four hours, was dead-sleepy. "He kept
me until nearly ten o'clock," says the delighted Lady Hester, "an hour
after the moment when everyone was obliged to remain in his house under
pain of death (new decree of the pacha). All the doors were shut, but
all opened for me, and they did not say a word to me."
Lady Hester had, however, another object than that of initiating the
Turks into the feminist evolution. She wished to go to Palmyra--Palmyra,
the far-off and fabulous town which slept in the heart of the sands,
guarded by the burning steppes, without water and without life. "The
Syrian desert has only one Palmyra, as the sky has only one sun."
Caprice of the tourist and of the woman, adventurous taste for unbeaten
tracks? indifference to or even love of danger? latent recollection of
Brothers and the prophet Pierre? desire to defy the English travellers
who had failed on the journey to Tadmor? And perhaps, plan secret and
slowly matured of regulating and of blending together the wandering
tribes of the Bedouins, of intriguing with the sheiks, of unravelling
again the political skein, a skein short, knotted and entangled with
Arab politics?
There are people who do not cease from imposing charity upon the poor;
the needy--who cling to their life, dirty, laborious but independent,
more than we think--are washed, scrubbed, brushed, nursed, taught,
physicked, improved by force. Lady Hester was of the species--more rare
happily--which is unable to see men scattered without wishing to group
them, to liberate slaves by force and to reform the world. This instinct
of domination, this thirst for authority, this imperialism, she was
going to satisfy without delay upon the defenceless Arabs. And then the
intercourse of a woman, of a queen, bound her. The ruins of Palmyra
conjured up too faithfully the name of Zenobia!...
The pacha's two bankers, Malem Yusef and Malem Rafael, to whom she
broached this subject, dissuaded her earnestly from it. The journey was
excessively dangerous, and the Bedouins would not fail to make her
prisoner and exact a very large ransom unless the pacha furnished her
with troops. Then a certain Hanah Faknah, who had acted as guide to M.
Fiott, offered to conduct her safe and sound to Palmyra. Lady Hester
learned soon that he was offering to do much. What was to be done? It
was impossible for her to cross the desert under a disguise, for her
intentions had been divulged and her slightest movements were noted with
extreme attention. She resolved to demand a formidable escort from the
pacha. Sayd Soliman then made her understand, in confidence, that the
Emir Mahannah, chief of the Bedouins, was in revolt against the Porte,
and that the inhabitants of Palmyra were beyond the reach of Turkish
justice. New indecision, new uncertainties! Meanwhile, the pacha had a
crow to pluck with the cavalry: the famous Delibash, commanded by a
young bey, an acquaintance of Lady Hester and son of the deposed
governor. Mutiny broke out at Damascus. In the deserts, terrible news,
come from Mecca, was whispered: 50,000 Wahabis were threatening the
town. The Bedouins had gathered and were ready to rush to their aid.
Lady Hester, isolated in her Mohammedan quarter, caught up in the
whirlpool of popular anxieties, was not at all uneasy. She thought only
of demanding an asylum from her friend the Emir Bechir, the prince of
the Mountain, who placed his troops at her disposal. She was flattered
by his reception. If, as governor, he had had diabolical inspirations,
she proclaimed him, nevertheless, an agreeable and amiable man. How she
was to change her opinion hereafter!
The pacha, uneasy at the turn which events were taking, had caused old
Muly Ishmael, the grand chief of the Delibash and of the Syrian troops,
to be warned. Feared by the pachas, who would never have dared to make a
hair of his head fall, he was adored by the Arabs, with whom he had
taken refuge on several occasions, at the time when his life was
threatened. Scarcely arrived at Damascus, Muly Ishmael demanded a visit
from Lady Hester, "for I shall be very jealous of my young chief if he
does not come," said he. It was as much an order as a request. Bravely
she went there, although somewhat troubled by the terrible rumours which
were in circulation in regard to him. She was obliged to cross courts
swarming with horses and horsemen, to stride over or avoid hundreds of
soldiers sprawling on the ground, to argue and parley with fifty
officers, before reaching the old chief, who was talking with the bey,
her friend. Muly Ishmael was charming, offering her his house at Hama
and an escort of Delibash. Lady Hester, very proud of this conquest,
called him the Sir David Dundas of Syria. She remained an hour and was
delighted by his courtesy, marked by a cordiality, a grace of manner,
rather rare amongst the Turks.
Then the Wahabis vanished in smoke. And, one fine morning,
Mahannah-el-Fadel, chief of the tribe of the Anezes, arrived at Damascus
to demand back 4000 horses and flocks of sheep which the pacha had
requisitioned from him. He asserted that the name of the Meleki (queen)
was in the mouth of all the Bedouins of the desert.
During this time, Bruce, who was returning from Aleppo with Mr. Barker,
English consul at that town, learned of these fine projects, and,
terrified, hurried on, without stopping, to prevent--if there were still
time--so great a folly. And the messengers ran along the roads carrying
letters full of adjurations and entreaties.
Lady Hester lost her patience at meeting with resistance. "No caravan
travels along the route by which I wish to go," declared she, incensed.
"And if there were one, nothing would be able to persuade me to join it.
They get into a ridiculous fright and arrive with a machine with bars, a
_tartavane_, which Mr. Barker declares indispensable. All the consuls in
the universe will not force me to go within it. What an absurd idea! In
the event of attack, the drivers take themselves off, and one is left to
the mercy of two obstinate mules. The speedy horse to whom the Arabs
entrust themselves, that is something like; that is better; that is what
I require! ..."
The idea of putting Lady Hester in a cage was certainly not ordinary.
Happily, Bruce fell ill, and the doctor was despatched to attend and
calm him. The road skirted the desert, and, costumed as a Bedouin, with
lance on shoulder, Meryon, by way of Yebroud, Kara, Hasia and Homs,
reached Hama, where Bruce, already restored to health, soon rejoined
him. He brought back with him a young Frenchman of Aleppo, called
Beaudin, who spoke Arabic almost as well as a native of the country.
Leaving them to continue their journey, the doctor again took the road
from Damascus to Yebroud. Then he made a detour to reach the village of
Nebk, where a man was living whose acquaintance Lady Hester keenly
desired to make. His name was Lascaris, and his history singular.
Of the Piedmontese family of the Lascaris, of Ventimiglia, he regarded
himself as descendant of the Emperor of Trebizond. Without tracing his
ancestry back so far, he had an uncle Grand Master of the Knights of
Malta, and was himself a chevalier.
Bonaparte having seized the island on his way, Lascaris followed.
Receiver of taxes--excellent place in the East--he met at Cairo a young
Georgian slave of great beauty. Abducted at the age of fifteen, she had
fallen into the harem of Murad Bey. Lascaris married her, for he was a
fervent apostle of universal brotherhood--it is probable that, if she
had been ugly, he would not have pushed so far and with so much
enthusiasm the application of his principles! On the evacuation of
Egypt, he brought his wife to Paris; but her manners and her education
were too much out of tune in the brilliant society of that time. After
some successes with shawls, some exhibitions of Turkish robes, the
Parisian women turned their backs upon her to run to other spectacles
more novel. Madame Lascaris begged her husband to return to the East. He
did not require pressing, for he him self was deceived in his legitimate
ambitions. He solicited through his aunt, Josephine's mistress of the
robes, an exalted post. He was offered a place as sub-prefect! Deeply
wounded, they returned to Constantinople. There an idea of genius
occurred to Lascaris; he proposed to go to Georgia to establish there a
new system of agriculture. An Armenian, who was on the look out for
victims with money, offered himself as treasurer. The trio crossed the
Black Sea, landed in the Crimea and were arrested for espionage. The
Armenian made off, naturally, with the cash-box, while Lascaris and his
wife were sent to St. Petersburg. Their innocence at last recognised,
they found themselves with a very low purse. Then, having gradually lost
all that remained--for the chevalier had many odd ideas difficult to
realise--he endeavoured to furnish the peasants of the environs of
Lattakia with European ploughs, the employment of which would double
their harvest. The peasants grew angry, and their unappreciated
benefactor was obliged to take himself off promptly. He became professor
of music at Aleppo.
On November 3, 1812, the doctor arrived at Nebk and cast about for
Lascaris's house. Perceiving a little girl of twelve who was sauntering
around him, he questioned her. She was the servant of those whom he was
looking for, and was called Katinko, or Catherine. But her astonishing
resemblance to Lascaris induced the doctor to think that she was rather
his daughter. The chevalier appeared on his doorstep, dirty and
wretched-looking, wearing an abaye of striped wool, wound round his body
after the manner of the garments of Robin Hood, blue breeches in rather
a melancholy condition, stockings and the red shoes worn by the
peasants. His beard was long and thick. His wife retained little trace
of beauty, which had disappeared, alas! not to return; the adorable
Georgian girl had changed into the stout matron with masculine ways.
They had arrived from Aleppo with bales of red cotton, which they hoped
to exchange for money with the villagers of the neighbourhood. The
doctor greatly enjoyed the conversation of Lascaris, whom his numerous
travels had made a very well-informed and cultured man. He noted in him,
however, a certain self-conceit, a certain sentiment of superiority
which had no doubt been the sole cause of his disappointments. He
appeared very embittered against Napoleon.
Two days afterwards, an urgent message recalled the doctor to Damascus,
where Barker had just fallen seriously ill.