Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/311

 were not natives of the province, then I should say you were not safe among them. As for Lady Hester, you know her determined character—if she is resolved to keep them, you cannot help it. There is one," added he, "whom I could wish not to be here; I thought him gone a year ago:" this was the one whom Lady Hester relied on for sending a bullet through the consul's body.

There is a large stone edifice of great extent, distant about three-quarters of a mile, as the crow flies, from the village of Jôon, more like a fortress than the peaceable habitation of cenobites. It is the monastery of Dayr el Mkhallas, or the Saviour, and contains about fifty friars of the Greek Catholic church, which repudiates the pope, recognizing as its spiritual head its own patriarch. M. Guys enjoyed the unlimited confidence of these people as the well-tried and efficient friend of the Catholic church throughout Syria; and it was no sooner known that he was in the neighbourhood, than the superior of the monastery gave him to understand that a visit from him would be received as a great honour by the monks. M. Guys devoted the morning to this gratifying object, and his reception was in the highest degree flattering. When he arrived at the foot of the Mount, on the summit of which the monastery stands, he was saluted by a merry chime of church-bells, and then the whole body of the friars,