As consul at Damascus he was continually in hot water, and his wife was not the woman to make diplomatic relations easier. Her manner with the Mohammedans among whom she lived, and whom it was her business to conciliate so far as in her lay, was detestable. On one occasion I was with her and one or two others in a very sacred mosque; a pious Moslem was prostrate before the tomb of a holy saint. She did not actually strike him with her riding-whip, but she made as though she were going to do so, and insisted on the poor man making room for her to go up to the tomb. What the man muttered I knew not, but I doubt his orisons having taken the shape of blessings. I left the mosque in disgust. If actuated by no higher motive, she should have reflected upon the harm which such conduct needs must work upon her husband, to whom, to do her justice, she was entirely and most touchingly devoted. It is only fair to Burton’s memory to show how heavily he was handicapped. He was not responsible for all the trouble that led to his removal a few months later from the romance of the Damascus that he loved, to the deadly dullness of the Trieste which he hated. The day after we arrived in Damascus Burton came to breakfast. He was excellent company, as of old, full of information and good stories of adventures and stirring scenes in which truth was so richly embroidered as almost to become fiction. One had to know one’s Burton, for the thing which he loved above all others was to astonish, and for the sake of that he would not hesitate to violate the virtue of the pure maiden who dwells in a well. Take him with a grain of salt, which was quite what he expected, and he was the best of boon companions. We were dining together once at the mess of the 2nd Life Guards, the guests of their then colonel, poor Fred Marshall. The conversation turned upon feats of swordsmanship, and I happened to tell of the wonderful skill of the chief executioner at Yedo, whom the dandy young Samurai used to bribe to test their heavy swords upon the bodies of dead criminals; it was said that he could put three corpses one on the top of the other on a trestle and cut through the three in the small of the back at one blow; this I have heard solemnly averred. “Ah!” said Burton, “it has always been a matter of regret to me that I never quite succeeded in cutting a man in two. I very nearly did once. I was alone in the desert and saw that I was being pursued by three men; my horse was tired and they were gaining upon me. As the leading man came up with me I drew my sword and dealt him a furious blow on the shoulder, cutting him slantwise right down to the waist; unfortunately I did not cut through the last bit of skin, so the horse galloped off with half the man’s body hanging over the saddle.” “And what became of the other two Arabs?” somebody asked.