Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/303

 tinado severely every man detected, in his principality, in any such conduct. Lady Hester knew what imputations might be cast on her establishment, if such things were left unnoticed; and, fearing that Messâad's intrigues (of which she thought this report but a link) might injure Michael's character, and destroy his prospects of getting a place in the English embassy at Constantinople, to which he had some pretensions from his father's services, she resolved to save him by making a signal example of Messâad.

She, therefore, ordered all the villagers from Jôon to be assembled on the green in front of her house, and sent for Mustafa, the barber, from Sayda, with two or three other tradesmen to be witnesses. Seating herself on a temporary divan, with all the assembly in a circle around her, not a soul dreaming what was going to take place, and Michael and Messâad standing in respectful attitudes, with their arms crossed, and covered, down to the fingers' ends, with their benyshes, by her side, she began: "That young man," said she, pointing to Michael, "is accused of  irregularities with" (here she mentioned the girl's