Only she knew well that the Moslems are not satisfied with buzzing and murmuring, and that they would not recoil before bloodshed to obtain vengeance upon her who dared thus to defy their most sacred customs. But is there not at the bottom of the actions which appear the most heroically disinterested a certain sentiment of the gallery which stimulates vanity and renders it more bold? And if one had told Lady Hester that the fame of her exploits would never reach England, would she not have recoiled at the last moment. On September 1, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Lady Hester passed the gates of Damascus at the head of eighteen horsemen and some twenty mules heavily loaded. In the narrow streets a considerable crowd gathered. It hurried towards the cavalcade, and all eyes were turned towards the person who appeared to be the chief of it. The pacha's page was uneasy; M. Bertrand trembled, and the doctor was not in high spirits. A word, a cry, a gesture, and the people who surrounded the escort had only to draw their thick ranks closer, and the travellers would have been delivered to them defenceless. But, deceived by the dazzling costume and the masculine countenance of Lady Hester, some took her for a young bey still beardless; others, believing that they were dreaming, discovered that it was a woman; but before they had recovered from their astonishment, she had already passed. Thus she alighted safe and sound in the Christian quarter. It is then that her indomitable character asserted itself; she did not rest until her household had been transported into the heart of the Mohammedan quarter. "I intend to take the bull by the horns and to settle down under the minaret of the grand mosque," declared she cavalierly to the doctor, who was very troubled at this new caprice. Scarcely forty-eight hours after her arrival, furnished with an order from the pacha, she visited, without putting herself to inconvenience, the best residences in the town, and fixed her choice upon a sumptuous habitation near the palace and the bazaars, formerly the residence of a Capugi Bachi (envoy of the Porte for confidential missions, such as strangulations, confiscations and so forth). A narrow passage led to a marble court, where two bronze serpents, coiled around a lemon-tree, diffused water clear as crystal. The apartments were small and sumptuous. The Christian owner of the empty house, his appetite excited by the sight of Lady Hester's suite, showed long teeth and a bill infinitely longer still. The smallest glass of lemonade was thus marked: "Sherbet for the arrival of the Queen." The doctor was obliged to curb his enthusiasm.