Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/206

 She would say—"What business have people to introduce their surmises, and their 'probably this,' and 'probably that,' and 'Lady Hester Stanhope, no doubt, in so doing,' and 'the Pasha, as I conjecture, had this in view? how do they know what I intended, or what the Pasha thought? I know that newspapers every day take such liberties, and give their opinions on what ministers and kings intend to do; but nobody shall take such a liberty with me without my calling them out. My name is everything to me, and nobody shall say he presumes this was what I had in my mind, or that was what I intended to do. At least, if people must pick pockets, let them pick it of a clean pocket-handkerchief, and not of a dirty one. Others are not to be made responsible for their dirty opinions."

From her manner towards people, it would have seemed that she was the only person in creation privileged to abuse and to command: others had nothing else to do but to obey, and not to think. She was haughty and overbearing, impatient of control, born to rule, and more at her ease when she had a hundred persons to govern than when she had only ten. She would often mention Mr. Pitt’s opinion of her fitness for military command. Had she been a man and a soldier, she would have been what the French call a sabreur; for never was any one so fond of wielding weapons, and of boasting of her capability