Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/314

 submissive character were never lost upon her, provided they were true, as well as apologetic; so pipes were ordered, and we entered into an armistice for the rest of the evening.

A curious but characteristic incident occurred about this time. In the ravines of the mountains, where the few living creatures that are to be found may be supposed to be drawn into closer communion by a common sense of loneliness, a shepherd named Câasem, who was nearly fifty years old, formed a liaison with a village girl, whose occupation consisted in leading a cow about in the solitary green nooks where any scanty herbage was to be secured. The circumstance reached Lady Hester's ears before it was known to anybody else, and she immediately ordered the man to be flogged at break of day, with instructions that nobody should tell him why or wherefore. "He will know what it is for," she exclaimed; then turning reproachfully to Logmagi, to whom the execution of the order was entrusted, she added:—"How is it you leave me to be the first to discover these disgraceful acts, giving the Emir Beshýr an excuse to say that I encourage depravity in my servants, when it is your duty to know everything that passes about my premises?" Logmagi went, gave the shepherd a beating, and sent him about his business. Lady Hester used to justify severities of this description on the ground that it pre-