Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/121

 ment; and, after remaining about six weeks under her protection, they returned to Sayda, where they remained unmolested. Her ladyship’s servants also enjoyed an exemption from the press; and, had she chosen to avail herself of the dilemma in which these unfortunate young men were placed, she might easily have ensured their servitude without pay, by the mere threat of turning them adrift: in which case they would have been compelled to remain upon any conditions she might have thought proper to propose.

An old Turk presented himself, one day, at my gate with his son, a boy about fourteen years of age, and, with earnest entreaties, begged me to take the son as my servant, no matter in what capacity, and for nothing. I asked him how he could be apprehensive for a stripling, too young to carry a musket; but he told me that his age was no safeguard. "Alas! said he, "these unprincipled Egyptians will lay hold of him; for there are other kinds of service besides carrying a gun: you do not know them as well as we do." I was very unwillingly obliged to refuse the man’s request; for how could a stranger violate the laws of a country in which he resided, any more than he could harbour a deserter in France, for example, where he would be brought to justice for so doing? But some of the agents of European powers do not scruple, in these parts, to enrich themselves by afford-