Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/313

 her, she fell back on the sofa from exhaustion. She spoke, too, a good deal, and in rather an odd way, of extraordinary sights she had seen, of two apparitions that had appeared to her, and of serpents near Tarsus, which go in troops devouring all before them, and with a tone of conviction as if she believed it all. "What does it mean," he asked me—"and why do you let her smoke so much?"

March 2.—Lady Hester was now getting better slowly, but, as usual, her strength no sooner began to return than it brought out all the unmanageable points of her character in full relief. Something happened in the house which ruffled her, and produced a discussion between us, I hardly know how; but it ended by her calling me a crabbed old fool: upon which I observed, that I never heard such expressions from the lips of ladies before. This set her off upon her inexhaustible theme of fearless speaking. "If you were a duke," said she, "I would use exactly the same expressions."—"Your ladyship's talents," I ventured to observe again, "are inexpressibly great, but, without questioning that, I only lament the intemperate use of them." Taking up this observation, she dwelt at great length upon the "sweetness of her temper," and I made my peace at last, by saying that a physician should be the last person to complain of the irritability of his patients. Apophthegms of this