THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA
LADY HESTER was cooped up in Hama. Amongst the old men, the most
grey-headed did not recollect so severe a winter as that of 1813. Nearly
all the fruit-trees of the beautiful gardens which caress the Orontes
perished frozen. A tribe of Arabs which was encamped in the plain was
engulfed by a snowstorm, with the women, the children and the flocks.
Alone the rustic norias continued to hum, and in the wind, the squall
and the rain their songs rose infinitely monotonous and melancholy,
embodying the revolt of the earth made for sun and joy. But the
travellers did not wait longer than in the first days of spring the
swarms of bees to take flight from the great dead orchards.
M. de Nerciat, passing by Hama, offered Lady Hester a salutary
diversion. Then Beaudin fell from his horse and spoiled his face. Mrs.
Fry had an acute attack of pleurisy. The health of Lady Stanhope herself
was not brilliant; but she was one of those women who endure better the
fatigues of journeys than the monotony of prolonged sojourns in the same
place, and the doctor, who knew the fierce energy of his patient, did
not venture to oppose the expedition.
On February 17, the Emir Mahannah arrived at Hama. Muly Ishmael, full of
amiability for Lady Hester, had warned her to mistrust the Bedouin
cupidity. The discussions took place in his presence. It was arranged
that the emir, as the price of his escort, should be paid 3000 piastres,
of which 1000 were to be given him at once, and the rest on the return
from Palmyra. Excellent precaution to avoid the accidents of the
journey!
On that 20th of March, Hama was in a ferment of excitement. For some
hours the town was buzzing like a hive, and the eternal norias
supported in chorus the increasing noises. Women almost unveiled,
squalling children, grave men, hurried excitedly to the gates. Jews,
caught between their curiosity and their cupidity, took the risk of an
incursion into the street to regain their shops at full gallop. Patrols
of Dellatis--their tall hats pointing towards the sky--rode about,
jostling the famished and howling dogs. It was to-day that the Syt, the
English princess, was going into the desert with her escort. So far as a
league from the town, the route was many-coloured with spectators.
Children posted as an advance-guard arrived at the end of the train
clamouring the news: "There she is! There she is!"
Lady Hester, her long burnous floating in the wind, mounted on a horse
with a flowing mane, passed, surrounded by her general staff of sheiks.
Their lances decorated with ostrich feathers, their curly hair
meandering down their cheeks, their bony mares, their savage demeanour,
made a bad impression on the crowd. A long murmur of pity and
commiseration rose towards the Syt. The janissaries who were keeping it
back were overwhelmed; all the inhabitants of Hama wishing to take a
last look at her who was going to her death, to be plundered at the
least.
Sixty-six Bedouins galloped on the flanks of the caravan, their keffiyes
and abayes floating in the breeze. Mrs. Fry, always so ill at ease in
her masculine garb, Bruce and the doctor, who had allowed their beards
to grow to keep themselves in countenance, Beaudin, Pierre, the syces,
the men-servants followed in good order. A file of twenty-five horsemen.
And to wind up the procession, some forty camels, with the haughty and
disillusioned airs of old politicians undeceived about many things,
defiled solemnly, showing their varied burdens: tents, light and heavy
baggage, firewood, sacks of rice and flour, tobacco, coffee, sugar,
soap, kitchen utensils, leathern bottles of drinking water, oats for the
horses.
Lady Hester undertook the journey as a true Englishwoman whose formula
is simple and in good taste: to have the maximum of comfort and the
minimum of boredom. Little does it matter after mobilising a province,
after unsettling a part of the earth, to render oneself odious to the
inhabitants. It is always necessary to set one's house in order to
travel with the English.
After a march of two days, the caravan arrived at the springs of
Keffiyah, where the Emir Mahannah was encamped with his tribe. Lady
Hester lingered there two days. The doctor dreamer, was he not seeking
to see again the Bedouin girl who had touched his vulnerable heart? He
called to mind the last stage of his journey with the Anezes.
"Ah, Raby, little Bedouin girl, where art thou now? Where is thy
graceful and full figure, thy gilded skin, thy sad gazelle-like eyes?
How lightly didst thou spring on to the back of a camel, placing thy
bare foot on his protuberant joints, seizing with grace his tail by way
of a hand-rail!
"Raby, thou didst turn thy head too often towards the stranger; perhaps
thou wast saying to thyself in thy artlessly coquettish mind: Why dost
thou look at me thus, amiable cavalier? I know that I am beautiful, for,
although I am only fourteen years of age, several chiefs of the tribe
have already demanded me in marriage. But my father demands fifty camels
and a thoroughbred mare, and he says that that will not be enough as the
price of my charms....
"Raby, little Raby, what hast thou done that a single smile from thee
should be graven in my soul for ever?"
And the doctor becomes exalted in sentimental and lyrical incantations
which time carried away like mustard seed.
The Anezes, of whom Mahannah was the chief, were at that time warring
against the rival tribe of the Feydars. It was reported that strong
detachments of the enemy had been met with on the desert routes. It was
necessary to be on the watch to guard against a surprise attack.
The order of march was strictly established. At the head were Nasr, Lady
Hester and her escort; Bruce, the doctor and the armed servants
protected the rearguard, and the scouts extended themselves unceasingly
across the sand-hills. The travellers felt then that the journey was
serious and disquieting. They were on territory which did not submit to
the Turks, and had no succour to expect. Their protectors were Bedouins,
conquered by the lure of gain to-day, but changeable, uncertain,
unattachable, hostile to-morrow. The caravan was long, the camels loaded
with objects calculated to excite covetousness, the servants little
numerous. The courage and the decision of a woman, her sang-froid, her
energy, her liberalities, the renown which had preceded her, it was this
which constituted the surest guarantees for the success of the
expedition! And this woman was ill, so much that Bruce and Meryon asked
each other, not without trembling, how she would withstand the fatigue.
How was physical exhaustion and mental lassitude to keep in good order
the quarrelsome and thievish Bedouins? Already there was a struggle,
cunning and dissimulated, between Nasr and Lady Hester: the one wishing
to compel the other to increase the price agreed upon, ready to employ
every means to gain piastres; the other persuaded that, if she yielded,
to-morrow her baggage, her arms, her clothes would no longer belong to
her.
The start took place at daybreak, in the sharp morning air, and they
marched under a uniform sky, of an implacable and dull blue. The tawny
sands muffled the shoes of the horses, and in the great solitude, the
glistening void of the desert, the smallest objects, a tuft of prickly
grass, a fox, the flight of a partridge, assumed an extraordinary
importance. On a sudden, the alarm disturbed the caravan. An attack was
imminent. From the extremity of the horizon a troop of horsemen was
rushing towards them at full gallop. Wild excitement! Rumours! Lady
Hester, however, examined with her eye the extreme line of the desert,
and immediately assured her companions that there were many horses in
the distance, but that they were without riders. This assertion,
subsequently verified, sensibly increased her prestige with the
Bedouins, whose piercing eyes were accustomed, like those of sailors, to
watch without intermission for the dangers of them seas of sand.
There were many distractions to relieve the monotony of the journey;
there were little organised robberies. If the servants, clothed anew
from head to foot, had the misfortune to feel warm and to take off their
cloaks or draw out their handkerchiefs, the agile Nasr supervened and
claimed his due. There were also mimic combats. All in a body, standing
erect on their high stirrups, they raised a shout, savage, swift,
strident, which the horses obeyed in starting off at full gallop. The
mirrors with which the saddles were decorated flashed in the sunlight.
The Bedouins brandished their lances. The horses increased their speed
to join the mares. The horsemen approached yelling at the full strength
of their lungs their war cries; their bodies were almost touching; and
at the moment when the inevitable shock was causing the spectators to
gasp with fear, a turning movement executed with excessive rapidity
checked the career of their excited mounts. The love of fighting made
some of them forget the game, and the blows became real; blood flowed in
thin furrows, while the heaving flanks of the cruelly abused horses were
covered with sweat and their mouths filled with red foam.
Then the caravan encountered the tribe of the Sebah, which was
descending the slopes of Mount Belaz, which was simply a hill of sand.
It was a magnificent and unknown spectacle. Not a fold of the ground
which was not covered with moving specks. It seemed that a page of
ancient history had come to meet the travellers. The desert on the
march! In the first years of the Hegira the nomads marched thus with
slow and weary steps towards uncertain goals. How had it changed, in
fact? The strong camels were still adorned with the haudag--compromise
between the palanquin and the basket--from which emerged the heads of
women and children, and the weaker camels carried the carpets rolled
into a ball, which appeared at a distance enormous nests. The men,
mounted on their mares, surrounded by wild colts, shook their keffiyes
of vibrating colours; the women, the ring in the nose, well-tattooed
lips, wrapped in their red cotton cloth spotted with white, resumed
instinctively the antique poses. And then there were the beautiful naked
children. Nothing gives more the impression of eternity and immobility
than the free life of the desert. And, carried back for several
centuries, Lady Hester, Bruce and Meryon watched the tribe disappearing
in the distance, until it became like a handful of confetti dispersed
over the sands and the call of the camel-drivers: "Yalla! Yalla!" died
away.
And when the steppes became larger still with the blue shadows brought
by the night, the caravan came to a halt. Sometimes alone near springs
half-covered by sand, sometimes welcomed by an encampment of Beni Hez or
Beni Omar. The Bedouins unfolded, as fancy dictated, their black tents
of goats' hair, lighted by a thousand holes. The women hastened to
prepare the evening meal, and baked gently over the embers the soft,
flat loaves. A gigantic cauldron was filled with water, butter and
rice--water collected most often in the holes and with which a
kitchen-maid in England would have refused to wash her floor, so muddy
was it, and butter which a prolonged sojourn in skin bottles had
rendered as rancid and bitter as could possibly be desired. All that was
boiled pell-mell, and the mud cheerfully incorporated with this mixture.
The admirers watched the progress of the cooking and squatted on their
left legs, raising their right knee to the height of the chin. They
plunged their hands into the dish and drew from it a heap of food, which
they threw into the air and dexterously pressed in order to cool it and
to make the juice run out of it. And their thumbs adroitly guided the
enormous shovelful to its destination. When they were satisfied, they
surrendered their places to others, and, after having plunged their
greasy fingers into the sand, they passed them nonchalantly over their
abayes. For they were dirty, thoroughly dirty; they employed their hands
for nameless purposes--such as to wipe their feet when they were
wet--while the neighbourhood of springs failed to stimulate them to
elementary ablutions. Sometimes there was mutton, sometimes also treacle
as dark as raisiné. And always coffee. The person who prepared it
ground the berries in a little mortar; at this music the whole camp
hurried up. Wiping the cups with an old rag--water is too precious to be
wasted--he sent round the bitter and scorching liquid.
Lady Stanhope's companions rejoiced greatly at her foresight by which
they profited after having complained about it.
"Nothing in the world has ever been so well organised," she exclaimed,
laughing, "which shows that I am a worthy pupil of Colonel Gordon, for I
am at once quartermaster, adjutant and commissary-general. We are living
as comfortably as if we were at home, and the Duke of Kent would not
give more orders to the minute and would not watch more severely their
execution. Really, it is the only way of accomplishing an enterprise of
this kind with some pleasure."
And the doctor, although pretending to have taken a fancy to camel's
milk, was very pleased to have a closed tent and sugar in his coffee.
Lady Hester had found the best formula for travelling in the East: that
which consists of living the life of the Arabs without sharing their
tents infested with vermin, of becoming impregnated with the
picturesqueness of their manners without mimicking them, of admiring the
patriarchal simplicity of their repasts without partaking from the
common pot. People who have never roved the world except from the depths
of their arm-chairs, do not understand this reserve; it is so much less
poetical! But the greatest travellers are those who watch their luggage
with the greatest care. One can very well enjoy the pleasure of a
Bedouin camp without being covered with fleas and without having one's
stomach turned by meats more or less dirty and decomposed. Only few
persons have the courage of their opinions.
Lady Hester had courage of all kinds. Thus, she really knew the
Bedouins, not the Bedouins of exportation and of comic opera, but the
dirty Bedouins, the Bedouins to the life, braggarts, plunderers, cheats,
rancorous haters, as witness the one who having had his pipe filled with
camel dung, by way of tobacco, by a Christian humorist, gave the village
over to fire and sword, and exterminated all the caravans within reach
of his vengeance! But so ready in praises, so apt in compliments,
singularly discerning--do they not call her "the Queen?"
From time to time, there was certainly a shadow. The Bedouins showed
their true character in declaring that if the pacha's troops had had the
audacity to penetrate into the desert, they would have sent
them--stark-naked and without beards--to their affairs. Was it not,
after all, the fault of those who treated them as fools and related to
them cock and bull stories at a time when they are most susceptible and
more difficult to manage than all the nations of old Europe.
And then she had the good fortune to encounter a sheik. A marvellous
sheik! A sheik in whose presence Lord Petersham would die with envy. The
sprightly air of a Frenchman with the manners and the ease of Lord
Rivers or the Duke of Grafton.
She learned the Bedouin morals, the strange customs and the famous
_Dukhyl_, the code of the rights and the prohibitions of hospitality. A
Bedouin who had been robbed has no courts to which to appeal. What does
he do? He lies in wait for the robber and so soon as he catches sight of
him, he throws at him a ball of thread which he has concealed in his
hand. If the ball of thread in unwinding itself touches the robber, the
victim has won his cause and recovers his property. But if he misses his
aim, he must fly as quickly as he can to save his life. The captive to
regain his liberty has only to make secretly a knot in his master's
keffiye, but, attention, _nefah_!
If the murderer succeeds in entering his victim's tent or in eating at
the family table, he is sacred, but take care, _nefah_!
Thus, the robber is never sure of keeping his booty, the victor his
prisoner, the son of the assassinated his vengeance. Their piercing
sight is their only defence, and the fateful word is able alone to break
the charm. All the Bedouins have more or less clean consciences,
unceasingly on their guard, watching on the right, watching on the left,
always distrustful, never in repose, they have too often not to fear to
be duped in their turn. And the camp resounds with the word "_nefah_"
which the children and women repeat in shrill tones.
By an admirable foresight, the Bedouins have understood the inanity of a
justice often lame and one-eyed, and have remitted to chance the care of
passing sentence. Only in this game of blindman's buff, which takes the
place of social laws, they are the most adroit and the strongest who
gain the end, the forfeits are bloody, and the feeble, those who run
less swiftly, those who are captured, mark out the track, motionless for
ever.
Lady Hester was accustomed, when the first disturbance which followed
the installation of the camp had quieted down, to gather under her tent
the sheiks with whom she desired to talk. She was highly amused at the
terror which they had of Russia. They thanked Allah that she was not the
Czarina, otherwise, said they, their liberty would have been lost.
But one evening, Nasr, urged on by one knows not what maggot in his
brain, retorted sharply to the messenger:
"Lady Hester is perhaps the daughter of a vizier, but I am the son of a
prince, and I am not disposed to go to her tent now. If she had need of
me, let her come or send her interpreter."
Lady Hester was obliged to swallow the insult in silence and to restrain
the answer which rose to her lips. The Bedouins were in a hum of
excitement, murmuring that Nasr was angry, that that did not augur
anything good, that he was going to give the order to return. And, as
had been foreseen, a very bad effect was produced on the servants, who
pricked up their ears like hares surrounded by the hunters. But Lady
Hester remained very calm and treated Nasr with the most complete
indifference. This was not what he was expecting, and he postponed until
the following night the end of his attempt at intimidation.
At dawn, the doctor started for Palmyra as a courier. While Lady Hester,
shaken in her confidence in Nasr, was conferring with Bruce and Beaudin
as to the measures to be taken, Pierre came running to announce that
some mares had been carried off and that Rajdans were roaming round the
camp. They heard neighing, cries, the sound of hoofs and galloping. The
Bedouins were making ready for the fight.
Nasr, enveloping himself with mystery, rushed up to Lady Hester's tent,
relating that he was going to be attacked on account of his alliance
with her. "I shall perish rather than abandon thee," he declared, making
visible efforts to animate himself to enthusiasm. Lady Hester, having
judged the degree of his heroism, decided to leave him and to go alone
into the desert. Refusing to listen to him, alarmed by this new folly,
she sprang on her horse and started. Her mare was a good one and her
dagger trustworthy. Suddenly, she caught sight of Bedouins armed to the
teeth who were coming in her direction. Then, standing erect on her
stirrups, and removing the yashmak which veiled her face transfigured by
anger, she cried in a voice of command: "Stop! stop!" Pronounced in an
unknown tongue, this order only produced the more effect, and the
horsemen reined back their steeds, but to raise exclamations of joy and
admiration. It was only a ruse of Nasr to prove her courage. The Bedouin
pleasantries are sometimes clumsy.
On the morrow, towards midday, at the time when the sun was dissolving
the sands into orange-coloured gems, Lady Hester and her escort reached
the last hills which guarded the mysterious town. And the desert was
suddenly peopled with strange beings, gnomes or demons sprung up from
the earth. All the male inhabitants of Palmyra had come to meet their
visitor. Some fifty of them, on foot, clad in simple little short
petticoats and ornamented with a thousand glass beads, which glared on
their swarthy skin like gildings on the morocco of a tawny binding,
joined to their deafening cries the noise of old cauldrons and saucepans
which they beat with all their might. Others, more proud than d'Artagnan
himself, mounted on their Arab mares, fired their matchlocks under the
nose of Lady Hester, who happily did not dislike the smell of powder.
They mimicked the attack and defence of a caravan, and the pedestrians
gave proof of an incredible dexterity in the art of plundering the
horsemen. Never had more experienced valets de chambre, in a shorter
time, undressed their masters from head to foot.
Lady Hester quietened the excited band so soon as she caught sight of
the square towers with which the Valley of Tombs began, and demanded
silence.
The ruins were there.... What joy and what pleasure there is in the
discovery of dead cities! These places which were the theatre of events
which distance has rendered extraordinary belong to the traveller. He is
able at his pleasure and for some hours to recover the colonnades which
the sand smothers, to finish Justinian's wall, to people the fallen
temples and the mortally wounded tetraphylles with the shades of those
whom he particularly admires.
But this evocation was not permitted Lady Hester. Palmyra lived again.
Palmyra was taking a new and different flight with all these Bedouins
clinging to its ruined flanks as to the wrinkled visage of an old
coquette whom paint and powder rejuvenate too much for recollection, not
enough for credibility.
Across these steppes of gilded stones, from which stood out some
beautiful columns intact and virginal, one could divine still the line
of a triumphal portico. The great central arcade raised towards the sky
its pillars fifty feet high, while the lateral arcades, more modest,
framed it intermittently. Infinite rows of columns of a rose and yellow
colour; stone flesh caressed and polished by the burning and amorous
suns of thousands of days! Against each column leant a console bearing
the statue of a celebrated personage, perhaps one of those bold caravan
leaders who, from the rivers Tigris or Ganges, had brought to Palmyra
the brocades of Mosul and the silks of Baghdad, the glass-ware of Irak,
the ivory sculptured in silver, the porcelains of China, the sandal-wood
and the pearls. But the sands which swallow up everything, the living as
the dead, had mingled the débris of the statues with the bones of the
heroes. There remained only Greek or Palmyrian inscriptions half-eaten
away by time.
What was, then, this prodigy? On the iron props which formerly sustained
the consoles, young girls were mounted. They kept their fifteen or
sixteen year old bodies so perfectly rigid that from afar they looked
like white statues. Their loose robes were twisted round their bodies in
antique draperies; they wore veils and garlands of flowers. On each side
of the pillars, other young girls were grouped. And from one column to
the other ran a string of beautiful brown children elevating thyrsi.
While Lady Hester was passing these living statues remained motionless,
but afterwards, springing from their pedestals, they joined the
procession, dancing. The triumphal promenade continued for twelve
hundred metres, to terminate in the final apotheosis. Suspended by a
miracle to the top of the last arch, a young Bedouin girl deposited a
crown on the head of Lady Hester. Then the popular enthusiasm knew no
longer any bounds. The poets--all the Arabs are poets--chanted verses in
her praise, and the crowd took up the chorus, to the great displeasure
of the forty camels, which protested loudly. The entire village was
dancing in the steps of the stranger who had braved the seas and the
deserts to come to it.
Lady Hester was at last satisfied. She was not astonished, for nothing
could surpass her dreams of vengeance and her desire for glory. Why did
they not see her entry into Palmyra, those detested English who had so
disdainfully discarded her? Moore in his golden medallion took part in
the fête.
By what was in former times a monumental staircase, but was now only
dust, she arrived at the Temple of the Sun. Erected out of blocks of
marble, it rose still great on the field of desolation and ruins. The
gigantic walls of the sacred enclosure were crumbling in all parts,
exposing the immense square court 250 metres in length which surrounded
the sanctuary, to-day a mosque. As veritable butchers of art, the Arabs
had slashed the sanctuary to dig there their dens, and the pure line of
columns appeared to weep over this invasion of executioners. At her
house the excited people left her.
Bruce and Meryon, who retained a strong academic tincture, had abundant
leisure during the quiet hours of that evening to recall their classical
souvenirs. Zenobia and Hester Stanhope! What a vast horizon opens to all
the meditations of history and philosophy! What a comparison to make
between the former sovereign of Palmyra and her whom the Bedouins were
already proclaiming their queen! Do they not yield to the ready
temptation to compare.
What remained of Zenobia? A name on antique medals, a profile spoiled on
old coins. She was beautiful, it appears, and the Eastern pearl was not
more dazzling than her teeth. Her eyes were charming and full of fire
and her figure majestic. The singularity of her dress answered to that
of her character. She wore on her head a helmet surmounted by a ram's
head and a flowing plume, and on her robe a bull's head of brass, for
often she fought with the soldiers, her arms bare and a sword in her
hand, and supported on horseback the most prolonged fatigue. Firmness in
command, courage in reverses, loftiness of sentiments, diligence in
business, dissimulation in politics, audacity without restraint,
ambition without limits, such were, according to Trebellius Pollion, the
defects and the accomplishments of this extraordinary woman.
Would one not say that he who traced this portrait had known Hester
Stanhope? She added only to the outline of Zenobia six feet of height,
her haughty features, her clear complexion and Pitt's love of orating.
But it is not sufficient to have a masculine costume to acquire virility
and audacity, and it seems that under the cuirass embellished with
jewels, as under the koumbaz and the machllah, the two strangers, though
divided by sixteen centuries, in courage and ambition are sisters.
Sisters also in their religious aspirations as numerous as different, in
the eclecticism of their doctrines and their dogmas. They both belonged
to that class of restless minds which is ever ready to welcome new and
subversive philosophical theories, prompt to understand and to
assimilate, prompt also to oblivion and to change.
Was Zenobia Jewess, Christian, polytheist or idealist? Greedy to know
everything, she had drawn to her Court a disciple of Plotinus, Longinus,
who professed the purest neo-Platonism, and Paul of Samosata, Archbishop
of Antioch, a not very edifying Christian, whose subtle discussions on
the mystery of the Incarnation prepared the coming of Nestorius. She had
made of these two men who represented each two currents of ideas, if not
hostile, at least dissimilar, her civil counsellors. In default of
confession, deeds speak; and in this astonishing choice is betrayed the
descendant of the Greeks dowered with that marvellous faculty of
assimilation appropriate to her race which skims over everything without
adhering to anything. And that is why at Palmyra they walked on the
ruins of a temple of Baal and a synagogue, of a church and of a temple
of Diana.
And Lady Hester, had she beliefs more solidly established? She had grown
and lived, she also, in the midst of a disturbance and tumult of ideas
too contradictory to preserve a firm religion. The great breath of
revolutionary theories set in motion by Rousseau had turned other heads
better balanced than hers. If she did not founder, she contracted a sort
of exalted misanthropy, peculiar to women, in which Byron and Goethe had
a large share. The ground was prepared for the innumerable sects of the
East, which multiply like mushrooms on a stormy day, to make spring up
there the harvest of their philosophies and their revelations hostile
and divine. She was no longer Anglican and not yet Mohammedan. Under
cover of the good and accommodating Protestant arbitrator, she was able
to invent a religion adapted to circumstances. As a country in danger
launches a national loan, she will make an appeal every time. From some,
she will borrow Fatalism; from others, the belief in the coming of a
Messiah; from others, Biblical prophecies; from others, again, the
existence of evil spirits.
And what resemblances between these two beautiful Amazons of the East!
Soul intrepid and pride insensate. It is Zenobia, whose father a
magistrate of Palmyra, a simple curule edile charged with the policing
of the frontiers, calling herself a King's daughter and of the lineage
of Cleopatra, and exhibiting the table service of gold plate on which
the Queen of Egypt was served at festivals at Alexandria! It is Hester
Stanhope, in her last years, deceived, robbed, devoured, despoiled by a
pack of servants both numerous and greedy, replying to the doctor who
was entreating her to reduce this clique: "Yes, but my rank!"
Certainly, it is necessary to transpose the facts, the frame, the
actors. It is necessary to lower the historical ladder to the rung of
anecdote, but the quality of soul, does it not remain the same? Setting
aside all that modern civilisation has added or taken away from the
manner of thinking, of living and of feeling in the third century, we
may say that, if we invert the parts, if we make Hester Stanhope ascend
the throne of Palmyra (she would have very much enjoyed that position),
if we make Zenobia descend to the tent of the English traveller, they
are not misplaced.
Hester Stanhope, would she not have deserved the praise of Aurelian
writing of Zenobia, after having crushed at Antioch and at Emesa the
heavy Palmyrian cavalry, the archers of Osrhoene and those impetuous
bands of Arabs called so justly the brigands of Syria: "I should prefer
for my glory and my safety to deal with a man," she whose implacable
hostility and proud resistance were to make Mahomet Ali and Ibrahim
Pacha remark, twenty years later, that "the Englishwoman had given them
more trouble to conquer than all the insurgents of Syria and Palestine."
Zenobia, shut up in Palmyra, besieged by the Roman legions who were
digging mines to shake the solid ramparts at the angles crowned by
towers, replied proudly to Aurelian, who offered her life in return for
the surrender of the town:
"No one before thee has made in writing such a demand. In war, one
obtains nothing save by courage. You tell me to surrender, as if you did
not know that Queen Cleopatra preferred death to all the dignities which
they promised her. The help of Persia will not fail me. I have on my
side the Saracens and the Armenians. Conquered already by the brigands
of Syria, Aurelian, wouldst thou be able to resist the troops which are
expected from all parts? Then without doubt will fall that ridiculous
pride which dares to order me to surrender, as if victory could not
escape thee."
Lady Hester would willingly have signed this letter of which the biting
tone and the emphatic turn would not have displeased her.
And when Lady Hester, grown old, without soldiers, without money, in her
ruined castle of the Lebanon, engaged in a savage and perpetual struggle
with her terrible enemy, the Emir Bechir, will cry to an officer who was
laying down his pistols and his sabre at the door of Tier room: "Take up
thine arms! Dost thou think then that I am afraid of thee or thy master?
I do not know what fear is. It is for him and those who serve him to
tremble. And let not his son the Emir Khalil dare to place his foot
here. I will kill him; it will not be my people who will shoot him; I
will kill him myself with my own hand"; is it not easy to imagine that
Zenobia would have used the same violence of language?
And of which might a biographer have written: "Her chastity was vaunted
like her courage and she knew not love save for glory." Of Zenobia or of
Lady Hester?
Only, only there always arrives a moment in which comparison stops; here
it falls into an abyss. Zenobia was _Queen_. She ruled a people; she
defended at once her country and her warlike renown. She had an
object--an object of conquests to create an empire.
Lady Hester was a tourist. She conducted into the vast world the idle
fancies of an empty heart. She defended her reputation of eccentric
woman by vengeance, by bravado and by ennui. When a woman begins to know
that she is eccentric, she is speedily unendurable. As for political
designs, did Lady Hester think of resuming on her own account the
project of a Palmyrian empire. Bruce insinuated it, not without some
irony. Perhaps he did not feel an inclination to play to the life the
part of a Longinus, delivered up by Zenobia without remorse, condemned
to death and walking to execution with a resigned serenity! Who knows if
she will not reveal herself another Zenobia, thought he, musing, and if
she were not destined to bring back Palmyra to its former splendour?
Perhaps will she form a matrimonial connection--the expression is
his--with Ebu Sihoud, the King of the Wahabis. Oh! evidently, he was not
represented as a very amorous object. He had a harsh look, a bronzed
skin, and a black beard and disposition, but he was undoubtedly the
richest monarch in the whole world. After the sack of 1806, strings of
camels had left Mecca, carrying to Derayeh, the white Wahabi capital,
defended by its thick woods of palm-trees and its ramparts of piled-up
date-stones, all the presents which the faithful disciples of Mohammed
had sent to the prophet's tomb since the beginning of the Hegira. Throne
of massive gold incrusted with pearls and diamonds, the gift of a
gorgeous King of Persia who had done much killing, crowns enriched with
precious stones, lamps of silver and emerald, diamonds of the size of
walnuts. That is sufficient to tempt the most sensible of young women,
even if the prospective husband possesses a savage character and a
sanguinary reputation. And for a sportswoman, what attraction in the
sight of the royal stables? Eighty white mares with skins shining like
silver, ranged in a single row, so incomparable and so exactly alike
that one could not recognise one from the other, and one hundred and
twenty others of different coats and admirably shaped!
As so many less celebrated households, Ebu Sihoud and Hester Stanhope,
sacrificing love to ambition, would join hands, would bring a great
revolution into religion and politics and shake the throne of the Sultan
to its base.
Would a general be required? By Jupiter! General Oakes was distinctly
marked out. How agreeable it would be to him to learn the art of war
under the orders of a chief so distinguished! And these Wahabis! Ah!
what a magnificent people! Like the barbarians rolling in hordes, with
women, children and baggage, over the wreck of the Roman Empire, they
formed an immense army, which was transported from one desert to another
with dizzy rapidity. These shepherds were warriors with all their souls.
Let Turkey take care! Despite the victories of Mahomet Ali, they
extended their empire from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Bruce
divined the prophecy that a warrior of Ebu Sihoud had proclaimed several
years before: "The time approaches in which we shall see an Arab seated
on the throne of the Caliphs. We have long enough languished under the
yoke of a usurper!"
But the night enveloped the recollections, and Bruce went to bed,
abandoning the phantoms of Aurelian, Zenobia and the Wahabis to the thin
crescent moon which was streaking with silver the sadness of the ruins.
Lady Hester, having learned of the gossip of all fashionable Palmyra on
the subject of the treasures which she was reputed to seek, adopted a
radical means of getting rid for ever of such a belief. She called for
her horse, and the sheik of the village followed her on foot. The poor
little tired-out man, little curious to admire the ruins amidst which he
had always lived, trotting behind, perspiring and puffing, demanded
mercy and confessed himself beaten. Surrounded by children and women
skipping like slougheis and running under the horses' hoofs to point out
the best way across the network of ruins, the travellers reached the
Saracen castle, whose flayed-alive walls dominated Palmyra. They leant
their elbows on the remains of the ramparts. At their feet, slept the
buried queen of the desert. These endless rose-coloured columns appeared
at a distance the plaything of some child giant forgotten on the sand.
Soon tired, the child has walked on his fragile constructions, and the
arcades and the temples have fallen in; some sections of the walls which
have escaped this joyous massacre alone remain. Feathery palm-trees and
pale banana-trees, like green favours which little fingers have thrown
to earth, spring up at random.
At the warm sulphur springs of Ephca, Lady Hester attended the bath of a
young married Bedouin woman. In former times, the girls of Palmyra,
"proud and tender at the same time, born of the mingling of the races of
Greece and Asia, passed for the most beautiful of the East." The beauty
of the women had survived empires, palaces and temples, and the sheiks
of the desert came continually to the ruins of Tadmore in search of
wives, for whom they paid very dearly.
Preceded by torch-bearers, Lady Hester visited the mosque. She stopped
for a long time before the sculptured ceiling on which could still be
made out the twelve signs of the Chaldean Zodiac. The astrologers, from
the depths of their mysterious chapels, had they predicted to Zenobia
the flight towards the Euphrates, the ascent to the Capitol under the
chains of gold, and the villa on the pleasant slopes of Tivoli. And Lady
Hester, in the presence of those stars which were crumbling slowly in
the gloom and the silence, had she the presentiment of her solitary
destiny in a shaking castle?
All went for the best, until one day Nasr surprised four Faydans roaming
round the springs. Captured, two amongst them evaded the vigilance of
their guards and fled during the night. At this news, Nasr, tearing his
hair, cried out like one possessed and declared that it was necessary to
leave without delay, for the fugitives had gone to warn their tribe of
the rich booty which awaited them. The departure was fixed for the next
day.
For the last time Lady Hester went over her realm. The setting sun
reanimated the jagged skeleton of the dead town. The tall columns
sparkled like candles. The night was transparent, the sky of velvet, in
which the golden stars trembled with a beauty which oppressed the heart.
In an uncovered space of the ruins of the temple, the servants had
lighted a great fire. They were giving a farewell reception. The flames
revealed dark faces and wild gambols. Pierre, naturally, was recounting
his history, and all bent their heads to listen to him, sometimes
mimicking the narrator, sometimes repeating in chorus an astonishing
passage. A Bedouin was explaining, in his manner, the great deeds of
Napoleon:
"The French are supernatural beings; their weapons of war are more
terrible than thunder. They have cannon which discharge balls of a size
which cannot be measured; and, extraordinary thing! very often these
balls remain quiet for a moment. Then, at the moment when one thinks the
least of them, they open with a crash and destroy everything which
surrounds them (_bombs_). They have, besides, the gift of multiplying at
will, for often one sees a little troop advancing, which, at the moment
when one thinks the least of it, extends, multiplies and covers
sometimes a plain of which they occupied at first only a little part
(_square battalions_). Finally, they possess guns with which they fire
often fifteen or twenty shots without needing to reload; it is a
continual fire (_line or platoon firing_). There are among them soldiers
who wear tall caps of hair; ho! those men are terrible; one is enough to
bring to the ground six Arab horsemen. The country which they inhabit is
very far from here; it is separated from us by the sea. Ah, well! if
they desired, they would succeed in passing under it and would arrive
here in the twinkling of an eye...." The jargon of the women, kept apart
from these fraternal love-feasts, alone rent the darkness.
On April 4, at dawn, the Bedouins, excited by the arrival of the
Faydans, broke up the camp in all haste. Lady Hester was broken-hearted
at leaving without saying good-bye. As for the doctor, he was chiefly
anxious to procure the recipe for a sweet sauce to eat with hare, in
which figured dried raisins and onions. That interested him much more
than all the ruins of creation. Nasr, through calculation or through
fear of losing the deposit entrusted to Muly Ismael, hastened the march,
allowing respite neither to beasts nor men. He was not reassured until
after having crossed the Belaz mountains and fallen in with the tribe of
the Sebah and many other Bedouin tribes which were posted on the path of
the Syt.
Lady Hester was thirty-seven years of age at this period, but her
dazzling beauty was able to face the double proof of broad daylight and
popular infatuation. Lovingly thousands of women--whom she had, besides,
overwhelmed with handkerchiefs and necklaces--surrounded her. All the
men, fascinated by her manner of mounting half-wild horses, proclaimed
her _Queen_, and made her enter their tribe, giving her, as to a child
of the desert, the right of recommending travellers. It is then that a
Bedouin, carried away by the cavalcades, the cheering and the general
enthusiasm, threw down his keffiye, crying: "Let them give me a hat, and
I will go to England!"
Lady Hester learned afterwards that 300 Faydan horsemen had pursued the
caravan, but having fallen foul of the rearguard of the Sebahs, they had
abandoned a game lost in advance. There had been some wounded, and the
doctor was requested to give them his attention. But what was he to do
with the light-hearted fellows who washed their wounds with the urine of
camels and who, after some days of this treatment, were in perfect
health! It is useless to be fastidious; it is too disconcerting.
In the midst of an extraordinary concourse of admirers and spectators,
Lady Hester returned to her pleasant villa at Hama. Nasr drew his 2000
piastres and returned to his desert, quite contented. How far is this
modest sum from the 30,000 piastres which a number of travellers
benevolently lent him, Didot at their head! As for the two Bedouins whom
Lady Hester had brought with the intention of exhibiting them later in
England, they pined away so rapidly, they assumed so quickly a pitiable
and sickly appearance, that she was obliged to send them back without
delay to their vermin and their sun.