Nasr, enveloping himself with mystery, rushed up to Lady Hester's tent, relating that he was going to be attacked on account of his alliance with her. "I shall perish rather than abandon thee," he declared, making visible efforts to animate himself to enthusiasm. Lady Hester, having judged the degree of his heroism, decided to leave him and to go alone into the desert. Refusing to listen to him, alarmed by this new folly, she sprang on her horse and started. Her mare was a good one and her dagger trustworthy. Suddenly, she caught sight of Bedouins armed to the teeth who were coming in her direction. Then, standing erect on her stirrups, and removing the yashmak which veiled her face transfigured by anger, she cried in a voice of command: "Stop! stop!" Pronounced in an unknown tongue, this order only produced the more effect, and the horsemen reined back their steeds, but to raise exclamations of joy and admiration. It was only a ruse of Nasr to prove her courage. The Bedouin pleasantries are sometimes clumsy. On the morrow, towards midday, at the time when the sun was dissolving the sands into orange-coloured gems, Lady Hester and her escort reached the last hills which guarded the mysterious town. And the desert was suddenly peopled with strange beings, gnomes or demons sprung up from the earth. All the male inhabitants of Palmyra had come to meet their visitor. Some fifty of them, on foot, clad in simple little short petticoats and ornamented with a thousand glass beads, which glared on their swarthy skin like gildings on the morocco of a tawny binding, joined to their deafening cries the noise of old cauldrons and saucepans which they beat with all their might. Others, more proud than d'Artagnan himself, mounted on their Arab mares, fired their matchlocks under the nose of Lady Hester, who happily did not dislike the smell of powder. They mimicked the attack and defence of a caravan, and the pedestrians gave proof of an incredible dexterity in the art of plundering the horsemen. Never had more experienced valets de chambre, in a shorter time, undressed their masters from head to foot. Lady Hester quietened the excited band so soon as she caught sight of the square towers with which the Valley of Tombs began, and demanded silence. The ruins were there.... What joy and what pleasure there is in the discovery of dead cities! These places which were the theatre of events which distance has rendered extraordinary belong to the traveller. He is able at his pleasure and for some hours to recover the colonnades which the sand smothers, to finish Justinian's wall, to people the fallen temples and the mortally wounded tetraphylles with the shades of those whom he particularly admires.