Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/322

 king, nor priest, nor peasant, shall enter when that hour comes. You and others will then repent of not having listened to my words."

Saturday, March 10.—Let us take this night as a sample of many others, to show sometimes what was doing in a solitary residence on Mount Lebanon, in which the vivid fancies of European writers had conjured up an imaginary mode of existence wholly different from the sad reality. From eight o'clock at night until one in the morning, Lady Hester Stanhope had kept the house in commotion, upon matters which would seem so foreign to her rank, her fortune, and her supposed occupations, that, when enumerated, they will hardly be believed. First, there was a deliberation of half an hour to decide whether it would be best to send the mules on the next day or the day after for wheat: then several servants were to be questioned, one after another, in order to compare their conflicting testimony, whether her fields of barley had come up, and how high, and what crops they promised; next, whether the oranges, now fit to be gathered, should be put under the gardener's care, or into a store-room in the house. Then ensued a conversation with me, whether Fatôom was not playing some deep game in pretending to be separated from her husband; and so on, with a score of other topics equally unimportant, but with all of which she worried