Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/205

 dinner; but, when they were served up, to his astonishment, she ordered them to be thrown out of the window; observing that it was strange he should presume to do that in Syria which he would not dare to do in his native country; for she thought that, at the restoration of the Bourbons, all the ancient game- laws were revived. She had a secretary afterwards who was an Englishman, who also went out shooting, and to whom she expressed her notions in much the same way, and wondered where he got his licence to carry a gun. Yet in Syria, every person, from the European stranger to the lowest Mahometan slave, is at liberty to go after the game wherever he likes.

If any one expected from her the common courtesies of life, as they are generally understood, he would be greatly disappointed. In her own way, she would show them, that is, mixed up with so many humiliations, and with such an assumption of personal and mental superiority in herself, that much was to be borne from her, if one wished to live amicably with her. Her delight was to tutor others until she could bring them to think that nobody was worthy of any favour but by her sufferance. Where she had the means, she would assume the authority of controlling even thought. Her daily question to her dependants was—"What business have you to suppose what right have you to think? I pay people for their hands, and not their stupid ideas."