Would a general be required? By Jupiter! General Oakes was distinctly marked out. How agreeable it would be to him to learn the art of war under the orders of a chief so distinguished! And these Wahabis! Ah! what a magnificent people! Like the barbarians rolling in hordes, with women, children and baggage, over the wreck of the Roman Empire, they formed an immense army, which was transported from one desert to another with dizzy rapidity. These shepherds were warriors with all their souls. Let Turkey take care! Despite the victories of Mahomet Ali, they extended their empire from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Bruce divined the prophecy that a warrior of Ebu Sihoud had proclaimed several years before: "The time approaches in which we shall see an Arab seated on the throne of the Caliphs. We have long enough languished under the yoke of a usurper!" But the night enveloped the recollections, and Bruce went to bed, abandoning the phantoms of Aurelian, Zenobia and the Wahabis to the thin crescent moon which was streaking with silver the sadness of the ruins. Lady Hester, having learned of the gossip of all fashionable Palmyra on the subject of the treasures which she was reputed to seek, adopted a radical means of getting rid for ever of such a belief. She called for her horse, and the sheik of the village followed her on foot. The poor little tired-out man, little curious to admire the ruins amidst which he had always lived, trotting behind, perspiring and puffing, demanded mercy and confessed himself beaten. Surrounded by children and women skipping like slougheis and running under the horses' hoofs to point out the best way across the network of ruins, the travellers reached the Saracen castle, whose flayed-alive walls dominated Palmyra. They leant their elbows on the remains of the ramparts. At their feet, slept the buried queen of the desert. These endless rose-coloured columns appeared at a distance the plaything of some child giant forgotten on the sand. Soon tired, the child has walked on his fragile constructions, and the arcades and the temples have fallen in; some sections of the walls which have escaped this joyous massacre alone remain. Feathery palm-trees and pale banana-trees, like green favours which little fingers have thrown to earth, spring up at random. At the warm sulphur springs of Ephca, Lady Hester attended the bath of a young married Bedouin woman. In former times, the girls of Palmyra, "proud and tender at the same time, born of the mingling of the races of Greece and Asia, passed for the most beautiful of the East." The beauty of the women had survived empires, palaces and temples, and the sheiks of the desert came continually to the ruins of Tadmore in search of wives, for whom they paid very dearly.