Quam multa antiquis sunt his incisa columuni Nomina! cum saxo mox peritura simul, Sed tu nulla times oblivia; fama superstes, Esther, si pereant marmora, semper erit! The intention was amiable, if the result were mediocre. But Lady Hester caused them to be effaced promptly. "I have made it a rule," said she to him more frankly than courteously, "since I entered Society, never to allow people to write verses about me. If I had been willing, I should have had thousands of poets to celebrate me in every way, but I consider there is nothing so ridiculous. Look at the Duchess of Devonshire, who receives every morning a sonnet on her drive, an impromptu on her headache, and a crowd of other absurdities. I abominate that sort of thing." The doctor took it for granted. The weather suddenly changed, and on November 7 the caravan started for the Neck of Cedars, which the snows were threatening to obstruct. The travellers were swept by one of those frightful storms of which the countries of the East possess the secret; tents torn down, lanterns and fires extinguished, the mountain shaken and trembling, howling of the wind. The muleteers prudently vanished, fearing a night service. They crossed the neck at last, leaving on their right the cedars to which the doctor compares those of Warwick, scarcely less beautiful, and descended on the villages of Becherre and Ehden, by a straight passage which would have frightened many expert horsemen. Some miles from Ehden, there was, in the middle of the mountain, clinging to the rock, suspended above the abyss in which the Nadicha rumbles, a famous monastery, the Monastery of St. Anthony. Miracles were there more specially reserved for epileptics and the mentally afflicted; but St. Anthony was far more indebted for his celebrity to the violent and implacable hostility which he showed towards all representatives of the weak sex without exception. The Moslems ought to venerate a saint so judicious. Not only had no woman ever passed the threshold of the convent, but female animals themselves were rigorously shut up, from fear of their mingling with the privileged males in the forbidden precincts. It was this reason which decided Lady Hester to make a détour in order to go to brave a saint so little gallant. She invited the superior in her own convent, associating with him, for form's sake, some sheiks of the village, and making a courteous allusion to the firman of the Sultan which gave her the right to enter every place. She went to the monastery mounted on a she-ass--double sacrilege! When she entered the court, all the onlookers, monks and servants, expected the earth to open under the feet of the impudent women to swallow her up. But all passed off excellently, and she visited the monastery from top to bottom. At every door there was a violent altercation which threatened to turn to fisticuffs between the feminist and anti-feminist clans of the monks. The meal was long and plentiful. St.