Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/133

 others told him he had better not. However, he did: and what was the consequence? why, the woman immediately jumped up, called him an impudent rascal, slapped his face with her slipper, hooted him, and followed the party until she fairly frightened them by her violence.

"No, doctor, they do not like mild people. They always say they want no old hens, but a jigger" (I believe her ladyship meant some ferocious animal) "for their master. As for what you say, that the common people of this country stand in respect of nobody, I can tell you that they do. You should have seen the Shaykh Beshyr, how they respected him. When I was at his palace. I recollect, one day. one of his secretaries brought in a bag of money. 'Is it all here?' said the Shaykh, with a terrible, cross, frowning face. 'It is, your felicity,' said the man. 'Very well,' said the Shaykh, still with the same fierce countenance; and I asked him what he put on such a severe look for to a very pleasing-looking man. 'Why,' answered he, 'if I did not, I should be robbed past imagination: if I said to him, I am much obliged to you, sir; you have given yourself a great deal of trouble on my account, and the like compliments, he would go away and chuckle in his own mind to think his peculations were not suspected; but now he will go, and say to himself, I will bet an adli some one