The young man, reckoning on his own resources which he considered abundantly sufficient to get him through the affair, had accepted against his will the letters and old Pierre. Besides, Lady Hester had allowed an imprudent speech to escape, which had not fallen on the ear of a deaf man. "When I was in the desert," said she, "I arranged with Nasr to give to travellers whom I should protect a letter of safe-conduct which, alone, should be of value; those who were recommended by me verbally were not to be listened to. They will be divided into two classes: ordinary travellers and travellers of distinction in whom the Bedouins will be able to trust as in myself, who will have the right to full hospitality, to mimic combats, to camel's meat. To recognise them easily, the letters of the first will bear a single seal, the second will bear two." Bankes had nothing more urgent than to open Lady Hester's letter and to make himself acquainted with the contents. When he learned that he was placed in the class of ordinary travellers, that he had received only one seal, and that he was not mentioned either as prince or gentleman, he was disgusted. Ah! ah! this old sorceress imagined that she held the desert routes; she was going to see how he would dispense with her. And the young man, abandoning the letters and old Pierre at Hama, started proudly on the way, under the protection of the Pacha of Damascus. The return was less brilliant! Stopped by Nasr at Mount Belaz, and having refused to pay for the right to pass, he had been courteously conducted back to Hama. Sticking to his resolution, like an Englishman who is on the point of losing a wager or whose vanity is at stake, he took a second time the road to Palmyra. This time he paid without complaint the 1100 piastres demanded by Nasr. But scarcely had he arrived at Palmyra, than another son of Mehannah demanded the same sum. Incensed, Bankes refused to understand anything, and was thrown into prison. On his return to England, he placed all his misadventures to the account of Lady Hester, proclaiming everywhere that she took a malicious pleasure in closing the gates of the desert to travellers. It is thus that History is written. In the company of M. Regnault, French consul at Tripoli, a little man, ugly and hunchbacked, but remarkably pleasant and intelligent, who passed some time at Mar-Elias, Lady Hester visited the French consulate at Sidon. The new consul, M. Ruffin, was the son of the chargé d'affaires at Constantinople. And the crowd gave Lady Hester an enthusiastic reception. Everyone wanted to see this extraordinary woman who had raised an entire province to avenge on the Ansaries the assassination of a Frenchman.