Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/262

 rolled in the sky (for a storm was raging at the time) was but a faint likeness of her paroxysm. When it was over, we drank tea, and at half-past one separated for the night.

February 5. The weather was still stormy. Snow fell in abundance on the higher chains of Mount Lebanon, where it lay apparently very thick.

When I paid my morning visit, Lady Hester held out her hand to me the moment I approached her bedside. I said too much last night," she observed; "think no more about it, doctor; but you know my irritability, and you must bear with it." She was pale, languid, and extenuated: her hands and arms were jerked in convulsive flings. Strong electrical shocks could not have shaken her so much. Alas! I sympathised too deeply with her wrongs not to forget all her ebullitions of anger the moment they were over.

When she found herself a little easier, she asked me to explain to her Julius Csar's calendar, which she had on some occasion lighted on in Ainsworth's dictionary. "When I was a girl," said she, "I knew all the constellations in the heavens, and was so quick at astronomy, that they took my books and maps away, fearing I should give myself up to it, to the neglect of my other studies. I had it all before my eyes, just like a pocket-handkerchief. What day are