Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/194

 away." The vile fellow promised faithfully to execute his commission, received in advance a recompense for his trouble, and then rode off with the money, and kept it. But Lady Hester, who was careful to ascertain, by indirect means, whether a Tartar had made his appearance at the khan, on learning his perfidy, caused it to be spread among the Pasha's and the government Tartars; and they were so indignant at his little trustworthiness, a quality on which, from the nature of their employ, they are obliged to value themselves, that they turned him out of their corps, and he never dared to show his face again.

To finish what remains to be said of this once shining character, but now the pensioner of an English woman, he had resided for the last ten years at a distance from Lady Hester Stanhope's residence, and they had not even seen each other for five or six years. "I have been obliged to keep him at a distance," said her ladyship, "for the last ten years, in order that people might not think I had taken care of him to make him trumpet my greatness: for you don't know what harm that man has done me. He used to go about preaching that all the queens in Christendom were a pack of women of the town, and that I was the only real queen. He told everybody he would not change situations with the first prince in Europe; for the day would come when, through me, he should be greater than any of them."