Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/245

 without Mr. Pitt? with him to guide him he did pretty well; but, as soon as Mr. Pitt was dead, he sunk into obscurity: who ever heard of Lord Grenville afterwards? So again Sir Francis Burdett has never been good for anything since Horne Tooke's death. So long as Napoleon had Josephine by his side he was lucky: but, when he cast her off, his good fortune left him. You know you sent me her portrait: well, it was a good engraving, and I have no doubt was a likeness. I observed in her face indications of much falsity, and a depth of cunning exceedingly great: it was her sâad (luck) that held him up. You may see so many examples of such good fortune depending on men's wives. Mahomet Ali owes all to his wife—a woman without a nose. What saved the Shaykh Beshýr but the'sâad of the Syt Haboos? Hamaady told the Emir Beshýr, 'You will never do anything with the Shaykh Beshýr until you get rid of her, and then the Shaykh is in your power.' So what did he do? he sent his son—the little Emir Beshýr, as they call him—who surrounded her palace with twenty horsemen, and, when she attempted to escape, drove her into her own courtyard, and stabbed her: her body was cut in pieces, and given to the dogs to eat.

"What is to account for some people's good fortune but their star? There was Lord Suffolk, an ensign in a marching regiment, and thirteenth remove