It is in these narrow valleys, where the light creeps in like a spectre; amidst these lofty crags which time carries away joyously by scraps, that the fierce mountaineers so feared by the troops of the Sultan are entrenched. They are tributaries of the Pachas of Tripoli and Damascus, but their obedience is uncertain, and no collector of taxes dares to get himself involved on their great tracks which end often in a cul-de-sac. Misfortune follows the imprudent person who would venture into the mountain! From castles encamped on the edge of abysses death would descend. And not the violent and honourable death which a combat, even an unequal one, gives, but the unforeseen, insidious death which slowly scents the victim, watches him unweariedly and awaits him in the perfume of a poisoned nosegay, in the clear water of a contaminated spring, in the most impressive cares of a servant who has sold himself. Kalaat Masjaf! Kalaat Quadinous! Kalaat el Kaf! eagles' nests hewn in the living rock, which have an ugly appearance and a sinister memory, lair of bandits where lived, meditated and died that strange Rachid-eddin-Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, who brought from Persia the doctrine of blood and of crime, inspirer of souls, who fanaticised his men up to the love of, the adoration of, death, awakening their energies and casting a spell over their wills up to the most degraded and the most humiliating passivity. At a distance of seven centuries, the Assassins had not disarmed, and each day brought a new incident to add to their monotonous and sanguinary chronicles. Nevertheless, it was them whom Lady Hester was going to defy, them who had everywhere secret affiliations, everywhere spies, them who knew everything, avenged themselves always and so much the more dangerously that they were totally indifferent to their own lives and considered as an ineffable happiness to die for their cause. The reason Lady Hester had was a grave one: in the nineteenth century a European traveller could disappear in the Ansaries Mountains without anyone being called to account.