Paule Henry-Bordeaux

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the environs of Deir-el-Kammar, Lady Hester went to see another chief of the Druses whose authority and influence were very considerable, the Sheik Bechir. He occupied the Palace of Moukhtara, and the doctor, who had more taste for feminine beauty than the poetry of nature, remarked that his wife was beautiful and his children charming.
These villages of the Lebanon, peopled by Druses, were silent and sad. The children even appeared grave. The men, robust mountaineers, with ruddy complexions, wore the black and white abaye and the immaculate turban with narrow and symmetrical folds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Happening to be one day near the famous window, he saw an old man who, with a nosegay in his hand, knocked at the door of the harem and handed it to a slave. Well, flowers are, in the East, the language of love; letters and messengers are too dangerous to make use of, and carnations, lilies and roses serve as billets-doux. On entering the women's apartments, Djezzar saw the nosegay in the hands of the charming Zulyka. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mahannah, being close to the fires, was warm, and threw his pelisse to a friend. A moment later, feeling the cold, he seized in the most natural way in the world a garment which was drying. The owners were obliged to watch their property!
Is not the hospitality accorded to strangers still the best source of the Bedouins' revenues? Hardly has the traveller passed a night in the tent of the sheik than the latter admires the beauty of his shawl. If he opens his trunks, a thousand prying eyes discover that he has spare linen and a store of tobacco. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Lady Hester, who had secretly written to Mahannah-el-Fadel, emir of the Anezes, received a visit from his son Nasr. Supple, slight, of insinuating and agreeable manners, the young sheik, his legs and feet bare, wrapped himself with dignity in an old sheepskin and in a ragged robe. But the orange and green keffiye shaded a haughty countenance with a sharp profile. The people of his suite were less elegant. Pierre—decidedly much more the cook than the prophet—composed a monster lunch in which Turkish and Arabic dishes alternated abundantly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ Lady Hester heard people talking of the doctor's strange recruit. Amused by the extravagant tales of the former soldier of Bonaparte, secretly flattered at seeing ascribed to her a part of the first importance, a situation of which she was very fond, disturbed also by the remembrance of the predictions of Brothers, she caused the "cook-prophet" to enter her service. But had she not already foreseen that she would be able to make use of him, or another? The sovereigns of the West had buffoons at their Courts who made the mob laugh; the pachas of the East had prophets who made it fear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ Bewildered, the doctor succumbed beneath the torrent of words, the vigorous gestures, the expressive mimicry, while examining the pointed and angular outline, the bony and deeply-lined face, the cavernous and bright eyes. Curiosity aiding necessity (the caravan was on the eve of starting for Damascus) , he engaged this extraordinary person. The information which he gathered in the village was favourable enough. Pierre is mad, they told him, and everyone knows that in the East madness is of no importance. ”

“ Some were pretty and stretched themselves on the sofa in studied attitudes. They communicated with Lady Hester by signs and gestures. Intrigued by her strange garments, they began to discuss in detail the different parts of her costume and to compare them with their own, curious to understand European lingerie. Unaware that they were spied upon by the men's eyes, they uncovered their feet bare to the heel, reddened by henna, and their white bosoms which the Turkish robes, loose at the neck and shoulder, allowed one to see. ”