Chapter X: In the Mountains of the Assassins

TIRED in body and irritated in mind, Lady Hester revived at Mar-Elias. At that moment, Pierre Ruffin, French chargé d'affaires at Constantinople, an intimate friend of the amiable Pouqueville, had his eye on the Englishwoman and warned Caulaincourt, whom he supposed to be still Minister for Foreign Affairs, that definitely settled in Syria, "whose climate sympathised better with her frail health, the illustrious traveller had received from Great Britain presents to distribute to the local authorities of the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, under the ostensible motive of her personal gratitude for the courtesies which they had lavished upon her." Was he in ignorance, then, that England had refused to share in the Ascalon expenses?

Sometimes, she dreamed of forming an association of men of letters, artists and savants which she would invite to travel all over the Orient under her auspices. She aimed at founding an Institute, on the model of that which Bonaparte had carried away to Egypt, and of which she would naturally be the head. Leaving the women to groan and sigh at the doors of the Academies, she was leaping the barrier of ancient customs and traditional manners and creating on her own level. Sometimes, she discussed the expediency of a journey in Abyssinia. Sometimes, she drew up memoirs on the marvellous properties of bezoar in the cases of the plague and mania. From time to time, she cast a glance towards that Europe from which she had fled without regrets. Sharply, she judged her fellow-countrymen, stigmatised emphatically the English statesmen as "senseless boobies whom their ignorance and their duplicity have exposed, not only to the laughter, but to the maledictions of generations present and to come," traced of the Restoration a picture engraved by a master hand and denounced the English policy against France, a policy of which she unmasked the faults with a singular perspicacity and an impartial violence.

"Cease to trouble yourself in regard to me," she was to write on April 22, 1816, to the Marquis of Buckingham. "I shall never return to Europe, even if I were reduced to beg my bread here. Once only I shall go to France to see you, James and you; but I shall go to Provence, not to Paris, for the sight of our odious Ministers running about everywhere to do evil, would make my gorge rise too much. I shall not be martyr for nothing. The granddaughter of Lord Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt, _feels herself blush at being English_. What disgrace to be born in that country which has made of its cursed gold the counterpoise of justice, which has placed humanity in fetters--that country which has employed valiant troops, intended to defend its national honour, as an instrument of vengeance to oppress a free people, which has exposed to ridicule and humiliation a monarch who might have gained the hearts of his subjects, if the English intriguers had left him alone to reign or abdicate.

"You tell me that the French army--the bravest in the world, that which has made more sacrifices for its national honour than no matter what other--would not listen to the voice of reason; and you think that I should believe it! Never! If a woman, poor and miserable like myself, has produced a very strong impression on thousands of savage Arabs, as I have done, without even bearing the name of chief, simply by surrendering to some of their prejudices and in inspiring in them confidence in her sincerity and in the purity of her intentions, is not, then, a king--a legitimate king--able to bring this army, to which he owes his crown, to a just appreciation of its duty? Undoubtedly, he would have been able to do it and would have done it, if he had been free to act. What ought one to expect from men who, during twenty-five years, have been their most bitter enemies, except what has happened?

"You may be disgusted; I care for that not more than a penny; for there is no soul on earth who has had, or will ever have, any influence on my thoughts and actions."

She maintained also a connected correspondence with all the people who knew how to hold a pen. Beaudin galloped across mountains and valleys. It was no sinecure that of being her secretary! One day, sent on a mission to St. Jean d'Acre, he slept in a mill in the environs of Tyre with, he declared, his head on his luggage and his horse's bridle in his hand. Nevertheless, in the morning, the horse had disappeared. Painfully he continued his journey, and received on the way a laconic letter from Lady Hester: "If you have lost your mare, find her."

In this eddying of eccentric ideas, the doctor did not see any trace of projects favourable to a return to Europe. Six years of peregrinations across the East had surfeited his taste for travel, and six years of solitude--solitude mitigated, it is true, by the passing of foreigners of distinction--with even a superior woman, had made him hungry for social life and worldly pleasures. Being circumspect, he ventured lightly on the burning ground of a probable return. Lady Hester loved the unexpected; she listened, smiled, approved and sent dare-dare Giorgio to find a medical man in England willing to come to her. She even gave the doctor permission to make a tour in Egypt. He passed two months there and met Sheik Ibraham Burckhardt. At Alexandria, his joy exploded noisily in regard to the splendid parties and evening conversaziones, and that without the least remorse. Had he not left at Mar-Elias a substitute doctor worthy of all confidence, a certain Signor Volpi. This Italian, formerly in Holy Orders, had taken advantage of the Revolution to throw off the cowl and to dance with enthusiasm round the tree of Liberty. This occupation not being sufficiently lucrative, he embarked for Syria, having taken care to provide himself with a syringe and a sugar-loaf hat, these insignia being necessary to be well received. Lady Hester often appealed to his judgments on humanity in general.

The calm in which the doctor was delighting was abruptly broken so soon as he returned from Egypt by one of those storms so heavy with threats in which the caprices of Lady Hester excelled.

From Tripoli to Antioch, between the Orontes and the sea, there runs a chain of ragged and gloomy mountains, the Ansaries Mountains. Bald rocks, dark and musty ravines, fallen ground retained by stunted trees twisting themselves into an eternal spasm, chaos and ruins. To these wild and enigmatical landscapes, which are covered by miasmas risen from the marshes and the ponds, from corpses of men and animals which decompose side by side, chosen inhabitants are necessary. In the Ansaries Mountains lived the _Assassins_ (Hashishim)! The Assassins! Obscure association, vast freemasonry, surrounded by the hatred of all peoples, both Christians and Moslems, seeking the ruin of Islam, mysterious sect which mingles, in blood and poison, the most ascetic mysticism, the most ridiculous charlatanism and the most implacable cruelty.

Ah! how the recollections of history haunt those deep gorges which gash and wound the earth and furrow it with wounds, the lips of which seems to draw together the better to preserve their terrible secret!

It is in these narrow valleys, where the light creeps in like a spectre; amidst these lofty crags which time carries away joyously by scraps, that the fierce mountaineers so feared by the troops of the Sultan are entrenched. They are tributaries of the Pachas of Tripoli and Damascus, but their obedience is uncertain, and no collector of taxes dares to get himself involved on their great tracks which end often in a cul-de-sac. Misfortune follows the imprudent person who would venture into the mountain! From castles encamped on the edge of abysses death would descend. And not the violent and honourable death which a combat, even an unequal one, gives, but the unforeseen, insidious death which slowly scents the victim, watches him unweariedly and awaits him in the perfume of a poisoned nosegay, in the clear water of a contaminated spring, in the most impressive cares of a servant who has sold himself. Kalaat Masjaf! Kalaat Quadinous! Kalaat el Kaf! eagles' nests hewn in the living rock, which have an ugly appearance and a sinister memory, lair of bandits where lived, meditated and died that strange Rachid-eddin-Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, who brought from Persia the doctrine of blood and of crime, inspirer of souls, who fanaticised his men up to the love of, the adoration of, death, awakening their energies and casting a spell over their wills up to the most degraded and the most humiliating passivity.

At a distance of seven centuries, the Assassins had not disarmed, and each day brought a new incident to add to their monotonous and sanguinary chronicles. Nevertheless, it was them whom Lady Hester was going to defy, them who had everywhere secret affiliations, everywhere spies, them who knew everything, avenged themselves always and so much the more dangerously that they were totally indifferent to their own lives and considered as an ineffable happiness to die for their cause.

The reason Lady Hester had was a grave one: in the nineteenth century a European traveller could disappear in the Ansaries Mountains without anyone being called to account.

On March 28, 1814, a Frenchman arrived at Sidon and lodged with his consul, M. Taitbout. He was Colonel Boutin, a great friend of Moreau and a very distinguished officer of engineers, who had received the delicate mission of preparing and sounding the ground in the East. Lady Hester had met him at Cairo, and during a dinner party she had turned into ridicule the mysterious air which he affected and had laughingly denounced him as a spy of Bonaparte. One remembers the frightful epidemic of plague in the spring of 1814. In vain Colonel Boutin's friends endeavoured to keep him at Sidon, but he was in a hurry and he left on April 6, leaving as a deposit in trust at Mar-Elias some of his manuscripts. Lady Hester had given him one of her servants, a sure guide and well acquainted with the regions the traveller was to pass through; but unhappily he was carried off by the plague. Colonel Boutin quitted Hama for Latakia. He had informed M. Guys, consul at that town, that he would abandon the ordinary route, which ran northwards so far as Djesrech Chogh, to cut across the Ansaries Mountains. He started--and no one had ever heard of him since.

M. Guys awaited him at first patiently; then he became alarmed. The report of his disappearance reached Lady Hester. She thought that the pachas were going to institute a rigorous inquiry, but the pachas feared too much the famous Assassins to raise a little finger in favour of a foreigner so foolish as to throw himself voluntarily into the wolf's mouth. The months passed. Then Lady Hester made up her mind abruptly. In the East, all travellers are brothers; differences of race and national enmities are abolished. She took in hand the case of Colonel Boutin, whom personally she held, besides, in high esteem. The affair was going all at once to rebound and drag from their tranquillity the unpunished murderers.

In haste, she drew up her plans. An inquiry, in the rotten heart of the Ansaries country, was difficult, impossible. A silence of a year had thickened the mystery. No matter, it would be necessary for her to bring the affair to a head, and she will bring it to a head. All the blood of the Pitts was boiling in this woman, who had truly received from Heaven the gift of command. She chose three men who possessed her confidence: Signor Volpi was sent to Hama. Soliman, a bold and resolute Druse muleteer, and Pierre, recalled from Deiv el Kammar, where he was keeping an inn, started to repeat Colonel Boutin's journey, disguised as old pedlars. They succeeded in their mission, and in October, 1815, when the doctor disembarked from Egypt, he learned that the proofs which had been collected were conclusive, and that the pacha was to be summoned to act. The doctor made the mistake of not being enthusiastic and of talking of revenge, of danger in the future when Lady Hester went riding. Let him not speak in that manner; she will do without him!

She wrote to Soliman pressing letters. The pacha, who was by no means anxious to irritate the Assassins, answered courteously, but evasively, that the troops would not be able to endure a winter campaign in the Ansaries Mountains, but in the spring he would do all that was possible to meet her wishes. Like the fleet sloughis which roll themselves up before relaxing their iron muscles and springing forward, Lady Hester paused to anchor her resolution for ever; then, in a flash, she launched herself towards the goal, but without deigning to cast a glance at the dangers which rose at each step in advance.

The spring blossomed again; Soliman made no move. Lady Hester judged it prudent to refresh his memory, and set out for St. Jean d'Acre with all her servants, covered with armour and costly apparel. To strike the Oriental imagination and convey a lofty idea of her rank and her power, she displayed all the luxury which her resources permitted her. She went straight to Soliman's palace, caused the doors to be opened to her, and made her way so far as the council-chamber where the pacha sat.

She penetrated the crowd, called for silence, explained publicly what had brought her and demanded vengeance. Soliman, astonished, but immovable, lavished compliments and presents upon her. She treated them with contempt, and tried the effects of flying into a great passion, the more redoubtable, inasmuch as she had intended and prepared it, and withdrew, in the midst of general consternation, threatening the pacha with the anger of the Sultan.

Mr. Catafago, the Austrian consul, had offered her his house. Next day Soliman sent to ask her to wait upon him; she refused. As, at the same time, the French authorities at Constantinople began to make a stir, the pacha decided that it was better to allow his hand to be forced. Lady Hester had gained the day.

But there was no question of a simple military promenade. The struggle would be a fierce one, and trained soldiers and an experienced leader were required. Soliman withdrew all the garrison of his pashalik and gave the command to Mustapha Barbar, the energetic Governor of Tripoli. Lady Hester, who followed with increasing interest the mobilisation of the troops, of "her troops," sent him a pair of magnificent English pistols.

"I arm thee, my knight," she wrote. "I have reason to complain of the Ansaries, who have massacred one of my brothers. I hope that these pistols will never fail anyone, that they will protect thy days and will avenge the cause of thy friend."

The choice of Mustapha Barbar was excellent. A brave general and a rigid Mohammedan of sincere conviction, he hated the Assassins with all his soul. He made vibrate amongst his soldiers the religious cord always so dangerous to touch in the East. In a state of religious exaltation, they set out for a holy war, and nothing was to stop them in their work of destruction. No quarter, no mercy. To slay an Assassin was to glorify the Prophet.

The enemy lay in ambush everywhere. Every rock concealed an assailant. Every abyss enticed death. It was necessary to carry the mountain piece by piece, tree by tree, house by house. Booty and blood rendered the fanaticism of the Turks the more violent. The old men and children who fell into their clutches were pitilessly massacred, the women sold as slaves. As for the prisoners, there was none of them.

The mountaineers, surrounded in their lairs, cut off in their last fortresses, perceived with horror that the fierce renown of the Ansaries was crumbling away. Mustapha Barbar ventured to attack one of those savage fortresses at the Kalaat el Kaf, which stood out like a defiance on a cluster of sharp-pointed rocks. Jealously the mountain concealed it, surrounded it, fondled it. For it, it sharpened its broken stones, it made denser its thickets. For it, it multiplied its traps, its slippery burrows, its deep ravines, its treacherous marches. All that Nature could invent to oppose to the march of man, she had lavished in its defiles. Three torrents defended the approach to it, and their beds were deadly and their high banks precipitous.

Nevertheless, Mustapha Barbar, in traversing the bottom of the valley where the foot sank as in a pulp of slimy and poisonous toad-stools, evoked the clear-skinned and blonde Englishwoman, his lady. He took the fortress; he destroyed it from top to bottom and razed its ramparts. He violated the sacred tombs of the Assassins, throwing into the torrents the ashes of the Imans. It is then that the Tartar, bearer of the heads of the vanquished which had been despatched to Constantinople, returned in all haste with an order to put a stop to the butchery. Fifty-two villages burned. Three hundred Assassins massacred.... Lady Hester had been well avenged of Colonel Boutin!

An illustrious traveller, Maurice Barrès, was, a century later, in the course of that marvellous _Enquête aux pays du Levant_, wherein are resuscitated all the "obscure life," all the "religious heart of Asia," to penetrate in his turn into the depths of the Ansaries Mountains. He looked for traces of Lady Hester, and he passed over the ruins of the Kalaat el Kaf without knowing their tragic secret.

People murmured, afterwards, that the true authors of the crime had escaped; they were too powerful to be reached. No matter, the innocent had paid for the guilty. It was a form of Turkish justice of which Soliman rarely gave the example during his reign. Moreover, Lady Hester thanked him with that matchless grace which she knew how to display when she was pleased.

France did not forget the part which the noble Englishwoman had taken in the affair of Colonel Boutin. After a speech from the Comte Delaborde, the Chamber of Deputies addressed to her its thanks, and assured her of the gratitude of the country. The _Courrier français_ devoted to her, in an article on Colonel Boutin, some moving lines:

"Colonel Boutin was splendidly received by Pitt's niece, Lady Hester Stanhope. Proud of her protection, he was on the point of succeeding in his mission when he was assassinated by the Arabs.... France knows how the murder of this illustrious traveller was avenged by her ladyship, who, by her influence alone and her personal efforts, demanded and obtained the heads of the assassins and the restoration of the luggage of the unfortunate officer."

Shortly after the Ansaries Mountains Expedition, the Princess of Wales arrived in Syria. Lady Hester had no kind of sympathy for her. Faugh! a woman so common, so vulgar, who exhibited herself like an Opera girl and fastened her garter below her knee, how detestable! In the famous quarrels which moved all England she had taken the side neither of the Prince of Wales, a dishonourable rake, nor of Princess Caroline, an impudent and slovenly German! Moreover, she judged it prudent, besides, to stay in the country for some time; the more so that the princess would undoubtedly have paid her a visit out of curiosity, and the expense of receiving her would have been very heavy. She embarked, therefore, on July 18, 1816. For where? No one in the world, save herself, would have had this idea. She went to take refuge in the midst of that very people whom she had just caused to be punished so cruelly. On the way, she bestowed her congratulations upon Mustapha Barbar at Tripoli. She disembarked at the little port of Bussyl, mounted a donkey and arrived at Antioch. Mr. Barker, who came to talk of her affairs, only remained with her a short time. She lived altogether alone, with some cowardly servants, in an abandoned house in the neighbourhood of Antioch. Absolute solitude. Superior people have regarded this attitude as comedy. It was a comedy which lasted seventy days, and might, at any moment, have had death as its epilogue! Who is the actor so stout of heart as to play it up to the end before empty benches?

Can the life of Lady Hester be imagined? The people of the country, by way of encouragement, made to dance around her all the victims of the Assassins. Round of honour in which hundreds who had been poisoned, stabbed, hanged, flayed, strangled, gave each other fraternally the hand. Well-intentioned friends warned her every morning that her life was in danger. As for her, she continued her long rides across the mountain. Sometimes, she halted in a hamlet, assembled the peasants, and informed them, if they did not yet know, that she was the Syt who had caused their relatives to be massacred and their villages to be burned. Then she made them a very impressive speech, telling them that she had avenged the death of a Frenchman, of an enemy of her country, because the cowardly murder of a traveller is an abominable deed which all noble hearts ought to condemn.

Then, it was the silence of the warm nights, the passing of the breeze which refreshed the gardens, the plaintive cry of some jackals quite close at hand. Nevertheless, not a hair fell from her head. The Englishwoman had conquered. The Assassins, astonished at meeting in a woman a contempt for death equal to their own, decided that to respect this life to which she seemed to attach no value would be for them a superior vengeance. They proved themselves, in this case, very profound philosophers. What a magnificent fate, in fact, would have been that of Lady Hester, "the Arab Amazon," according to Barbey d'Aurevilly, "who rode at the gallop out of European civilisation and English routine--that old circus where you turn in a ring--to reanimate her sensations in the peril and independence of the desert," if she had ended in blood in the mountains of the Assassins! She would have disappeared like a brilliant meteor, in the midst of her glory, in the midst of her fortune, leaving behind a trail of heroic legends. She would have escaped the slow agony of Djoun, where, overwhelmed by old age, oblivion and ill-health, she straightened her tall figure to make head against the pack of creditors and Jewish usurers, more filthy in Syria than anywhere else.

At the end of September, Lady Hester returned to Mar-Elias, unharmed. The Princess of Wales had concluded her lamentable journey in the Holy Land, dragging with her that Italian courier Bergami, whom she had bombarded in quick succession with the titles of Baron della Francina, Knight of Malta and Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and whom she had just appointed at Jerusalem Grand Master of St. Caroline, an order which she had created expressly for him, without taking into consideration the impropriety of her action.

Miss Williams and the doctor awaited Lady Hester anxiously. For Miss Williams had disembarked in Syria in March, 1816. Her attachment to her patroness was so great that she could not make up her mind to remain at a distance from her, and, after passing some years at Malta, she had left her sister and had, despite every difficulty--tempest, sea-sickness, mutiny of the crew and a passage of three and a half months--come to rejoin her. Lady Hester's lady's-maid, Ann Fry, awaited Miss Williams when she left the vessel, in order to veil her and to inculcate her with the first instructions relative to the new life. Such was Lady Hester's response to her devotion!

Amongst the visitors to Mar-Elias during that last year, the least commonplace was without question that young Mr. W. J. Bankes, who arrived full of stupid confidence in himself and with a conquering air. Lady Hester received him very amicably, and, learning that it was his intention to go to Palmyra, she gave him letters of recommendation to Muly Ishmael of Hama and to Nasr, son of the Emir of the Anezes. She also offered him old Pierre, who was always brought to the front when it was a question of choosing an experienced guide.

The young man, reckoning on his own resources which he considered abundantly sufficient to get him through the affair, had accepted against his will the letters and old Pierre. Besides, Lady Hester had allowed an imprudent speech to escape, which had not fallen on the ear of a deaf man.

"When I was in the desert," said she, "I arranged with Nasr to give to travellers whom I should protect a letter of safe-conduct which, alone, should be of value; those who were recommended by me verbally were not to be listened to. They will be divided into two classes: ordinary travellers and travellers of distinction in whom the Bedouins will be able to trust as in myself, who will have the right to full hospitality, to mimic combats, to camel's meat. To recognise them easily, the letters of the first will bear a single seal, the second will bear two."

Bankes had nothing more urgent than to open Lady Hester's letter and to make himself acquainted with the contents. When he learned that he was placed in the class of ordinary travellers, that he had received only one seal, and that he was not mentioned either as prince or gentleman, he was disgusted. Ah! ah! this old sorceress imagined that she held the desert routes; she was going to see how he would dispense with her. And the young man, abandoning the letters and old Pierre at Hama, started proudly on the way, under the protection of the Pacha of Damascus.

The return was less brilliant! Stopped by Nasr at Mount Belaz, and having refused to pay for the right to pass, he had been courteously conducted back to Hama. Sticking to his resolution, like an Englishman who is on the point of losing a wager or whose vanity is at stake, he took a second time the road to Palmyra. This time he paid without complaint the 1100 piastres demanded by Nasr. But scarcely had he arrived at Palmyra, than another son of Mehannah demanded the same sum. Incensed, Bankes refused to understand anything, and was thrown into prison. On his return to England, he placed all his misadventures to the account of Lady Hester, proclaiming everywhere that she took a malicious pleasure in closing the gates of the desert to travellers. It is thus that History is written.

In the company of M. Regnault, French consul at Tripoli, a little man, ugly and hunchbacked, but remarkably pleasant and intelligent, who passed some time at Mar-Elias, Lady Hester visited the French consulate at Sidon. The new consul, M. Ruffin, was the son of the chargé d'affaires at Constantinople. And the crowd gave Lady Hester an enthusiastic reception. Everyone wanted to see this extraordinary woman who had raised an entire province to avenge on the Ansaries the assassination of a Frenchman.

On October 28, Didot, son of the celebrated printer of Paris, passed through Sidon and was invited to go up to the convent. Finding himself in the presence of two Orientals squatting on a divan, he recognised Lady Hester by her beardless face and Regnault by his hump. Lady Hester did not ask him to issue a new edition of her travels, divining well that, contrary to the habits of printers, Didot would give her a great publicity. And he did not fail to add a zero to the 3000 piastres which the expedition to Palmyra had cost.

On November 15, Giorgio brought back the surgeon N-----, Dr. Meryon's successor. The twenty-seven trunks which he had brought were landed without examination on the part of the Custom House, mark of consideration from which it never departed throughout Lady Hester's residence in Syria.

Giorgio affected a profound dislike of England. The Duke of York was his intimate friend, and Princess Charlotte of Wales had sent him a silver chain. "I shall certainly wear it," said he, "but I shall not say whence it comes, in order not to give the Turks so pitiful an idea of English hospitality." One thing only had struck him: there were no fleas and the people did not tell lies. Having seen at Chevening a portrait of Chatham, he told Lady Hester that her face bore an astonishing resemblance to that of her grandfather, which overwhelmed her with pleasure.

Then Dr. Meryon thought of departing. He was affected in taking leave of Lady Hester, but excellent provision for the journey, gazelle-pie, tarts and cold fowls--delicate attention on the part of Miss Williams--soon restored his equanimity.

He embarked on January 21, 1817, believing certainly that he would never return. Ah! assuredly he had desired this hour with all his soul, but one does not leave a woman like Lady Hester without regrets. He had just closed a dazzling page of his life. The mauve terraces of Bairout sprawling at the foot of Lebanon were vanishing in the rays of the setting sun. Ah! would he ever be able to forget the marches into the desert at the head of the Arab tribes; and the assistance exacted by the governors of Syria to open the earth and to snatch its treasures from it; and the troops launched into the inaccessible defiles to avenge the disappearance of a traveller?

The East leaves in the heart a perfume of dead roses, which is quite sufficient to transform into a posy of recollections set with pearls the incidents of travel.... It is sometimes a flash of vivid sunlight on a load of oranges, sometimes a burst of laughter from a brown and dirty child, sometimes the dust of roads in summer, sometimes the peppery odour which the spice-merchants exhale....

THE END