But great enthusiasms have the brightness and the duration of fires of straw. Some weeks later, Lady Hester begins to think that Lascaris is a hare-brained fellow. If General Oakes is able to obtain some money for him, it will be a charity, for the unfortunate man is on thorns (the old fox continues the little comedy), but he must not be reckoned on; he is mad and will not be good for anything.... The cream of praises is beginning to turn. Finally, Lady Hester, saturated with the stories and jeremiads of Lascaris, gave him a handsome present to compensate him for his journey and invited him to remain with her. His part of interpreter stopped there, and having squeezed the lemon, she threw away the skin. It is an action in which women and statesmen excel. She was not to know the true figure of Lascaris until very much later, when Lamartine's book would have reached the East. What a miscalculation for her who pretended to discover the habits and character of people at first sight! To have been duped, she whom her divining instinct had never deceived! "It was not to Napoleon that he was so much attached," will she then say pensively in recalling the "humble demands"; "it was to him who held the pocket-book." And then, in a lapidary formula, she will endeavour to recover her prestige in the eyes of the sceptical doctor: "Lascar is had the heart of a Roman and the skill in intrigue of a Greek." But there are things which one invents afterwards, like those ambassadors who, in their Memoirs, attribute to themselves the merit of having foreseen the past. Mahannah-el-Fadel had sent a Bedouin on an embassy to Hama. He demanded a visit from the "Queen's" doctor. Lady Hester hastened to consent, calculating that she would thus gain the emir's friendship and would permit the doctor to discover the route, to hire a lodging at Palmyra, to prepare the expedition--in a word. The doctor knew that Lascaris was unwell, embittered, of a melancholy disposition. One night, summoned in haste by Madame Lascaris, he had been witness of a violent attack of epilepsy. Accordingly, in order to afford him some distraction, he offered to take him with him on the journey which he was going to make to the heart of the desert. Lascaris accepted and even confided to the doctor that for a long time past he had desired to visit Palmyra, and "had never been able to realise his project." He rejoiced therefore at this good fortune and proposed to abandon the world to plant cabbages in the ruins. The little caravan, Meryon, Lascaris, the guide Hassan, all three wearing the Bedouin costume: white koumbaz, flowing trousers, clumsy red shoes, skin pelisses, orange and jade keffiye, left Hama on January 2, 1813. It is a date to retain in mind.