Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/228

 until he had enriched himself. It was only necessary to encourage her dreams of future greatness, to say the world was talking of her, to consider her as the associate of the Mahedi, the Messiah of nations, to profess a belief in visions, in aerial beings, in astrology, in witchcraft, and to bear witness to apparitions in which her coming grandeur was prognosticated, and then she would refuse nothing: but that was not my forte, and I never did so. I went to her with a small patrimony; was with her, off and on, for thirty years; and left her somewhat poorer than I went.

"But it is not to be supposed that knaves, such as some I have alluded to above, were the only objects of her bounty. No; the widow, the orphan, the aged, the proscribed, the sick, the wounded, and the houseless, were those she sought out in preference: and time will show, when gratitude can speak out, the immeasurable benevolence of her nature.

It may not be useless to observe here that many stories have been circulated of Lady Hester's harshness to petitioners who presented themselves at her door, which, if explained, would wear a very different aspect. Sometimes a suppliant, apparently unworthy of her commiseration, would gain admittance to her presence, and be dismissed with a handful of piasters; and sometimes another, known ta be a fit object of