Soon the heat became infernal. They were in the month of August, and the thermometer registered 85 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. Lady Hester, who had lost appetite and suffered from acute indigestion, decided to go to Constantinople, the only corner of Europe accessible to the English. Sicily, which had for a moment attracted her, was threatened by an invasion of Murat. Not being able to obtain a King's ship, an American brig, the _Belle-Poule_, was hired to cross the Ionian Sea. Miss Williams remained at Malta with her sister, who was married to a commissariat officer. The travellers touched at the Isle of Zante, the flower of the Levant, the golden isle, which the English had conquered the previous year at the same time as Ithaca, Cerigo and Cephalonia. What an enchanting vision greeted them on entering the harbour! On the right, at the foot of a wooded mountain, lay the white houses of a delicious little town hidden in the olive woods of a light and vaporish grey; and tall and sombre cypress-trees climbed across the fields of wild vine to the assault of the citadel which dominated and completed this dream landscape. It was the time of the raisin harvest, and women with faces much painted, a layer of white about their lips, were drying the grapes in the warm sun of the Orient which blackens the skins, swollen with juice, in a few days. One ought not to remain too long in too beautiful countries. Their complete perfection produces insensibly an ennui which paralyses and a depression of the mind which leads too quickly to yawning admiration, then to torpor. It is perhaps for that reason that the great artists, the great workers, those who produce and struggle, avoid the enchanted lands of the South, where beauty is an easy conquest within the reach of all. Lady Hester, who cared only for action, stayed a fortnight at Zante; and on August 23 a felucca brought her to Patras. There she was rejoined by the Marquis of Sligo, whose yacht was wandering across the Mediterranean. The marquis joined himself as well to the expedition. Yet a new bodyguard! At Corinth, Lady Stanhope received a visit from the Bey's harem. The interpreter begged the men to retire, but Lord Sligo, Bruce and the doctor thought that now or never was their opportunity to admire the Turkish beauties to the life. A bey, whose will was law throughout the province, ought not to choose ugly women to beguile his hours of leisure. They concealed themselves, therefore, behind a wainscot whose kind crevices permitted them to see without being seen.