In this eddying of eccentric ideas, the doctor did not see any trace of projects favourable to a return to Europe. Six years of peregrinations across the East had surfeited his taste for travel, and six years of solitude--solitude mitigated, it is true, by the passing of foreigners of distinction--with even a superior woman, had made him hungry for social life and worldly pleasures. Being circumspect, he ventured lightly on the burning ground of a probable return. Lady Hester loved the unexpected; she listened, smiled, approved and sent dare-dare Giorgio to find a medical man in England willing to come to her. She even gave the doctor permission to make a tour in Egypt. He passed two months there and met Sheik Ibraham Burckhardt. At Alexandria, his joy exploded noisily in regard to the splendid parties and evening conversaziones, and that without the least remorse. Had he not left at Mar-Elias a substitute doctor worthy of all confidence, a certain Signor Volpi. This Italian, formerly in Holy Orders, had taken advantage of the Revolution to throw off the cowl and to dance with enthusiasm round the tree of Liberty. This occupation not being sufficiently lucrative, he embarked for Syria, having taken care to provide himself with a syringe and a sugar-loaf hat, these insignia being necessary to be well received. Lady Hester often appealed to his judgments on humanity in general. The calm in which the doctor was delighting was abruptly broken so soon as he returned from Egypt by one of those storms so heavy with threats in which the caprices of Lady Hester excelled. From Tripoli to Antioch, between the Orontes and the sea, there runs a chain of ragged and gloomy mountains, the Ansaries Mountains. Bald rocks, dark and musty ravines, fallen ground retained by stunted trees twisting themselves into an eternal spasm, chaos and ruins. To these wild and enigmatical landscapes, which are covered by miasmas risen from the marshes and the ponds, from corpses of men and animals which decompose side by side, chosen inhabitants are necessary. In the Ansaries Mountains lived the _Assassins_ (Hashishim)! The Assassins! Obscure association, vast freemasonry, surrounded by the hatred of all peoples, both Christians and Moslems, seeking the ruin of Islam, mysterious sect which mingles, in blood and poison, the most ascetic mysticism, the most ridiculous charlatanism and the most implacable cruelty. Ah! how the recollections of history haunt those deep gorges which gash and wound the earth and furrow it with wounds, the lips of which seems to draw together the better to preserve their terrible secret!