Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/171

 the weakness of his master's cause; that I disdained all partnership in it; and that the column on which Mahomet Ali's exaltation rested would, before long, sink beneath him, and his greatness melt like snow before the fire. 'I added, there could be little honour for Mahomet Ali to make himself a gladiator before a woman;' and here I meant that, as a gladiator was some criminal who descended into the arena to fight, so he was a malefactor too.

"As for Abdallah Pasha, he was not worth the pains I took about him; but I did it for my master, the Sultan. I kept and maintained for two years two hundred of his people, wounded, sick, and proscribed; and when I wrote to him to know what I should do with them, as the expense was too great for me, the answer of this ungrateful wretch was to ask me for a loan of twenty-five purses, and not even to send his remembrance to one of those who had bled and suffered in his cause. His ingratitude, however, has partly met with its reward: for the Sultan himself has heard of his cold-hearted conduct, and has taken away half what he allowed him. This is the man whose head I saved by my intercession with a person in power.

"He was a coward, after all. The last day of the siege of Acre he lost his senses quite. As Ibrahim Pasha had effected a breach, some of Abdallah Pasha's officers forced him to come upon the ramparts to