LADY HESTER, whose health was detestable, hoped that a new sky and a new climate would bring her that cure which always persisted in fleeing before her. On May 10, 1813, she left the enchantress Hama without regrets. The sun was scorching and the marching hours very trying, but Lady Hester, who never permitted herself to be inconvenienced, slept late and preferred to allow the porters to sweat blood and water at high noon. The caravan went back towards the north, so far as Latakia, where the traveller calculated to embark for Russia and perhaps for the Indies. Meantime, she maintained an active correspondence with Ebir Sihoud, the King of the Wahabis, her credulous imagination being stimulated by the Bedouin stories about this prince, who had presented himself with 800 wives. The doctor did not succeed in ascertaining what were her intentions, until she was about to depart. "It is to be hoped that she has no idea of making an excursion to Derazeh," said he in alarm; "she would be capable of taking me!" The route, meadows spotted with mauve flowers in which the horses sank, followed the Orontes, dominated by the Ansaries mountains, a rugged chain still covered by a coating of snow. Only, there arrived a thing which was not expected; the plague made its appearance and reigned as a harsh mistress over the Syrian coast. European vessels fled from the contaminated ports. Lady Hester accordingly hired a house and waited, without impatience, for the country was beautiful. All the summer she hunted the hares, the partridges, the francolins and the gazelles which abounded in the woods of olive and sycamore-trees on the bank of the Nahr-el-Kebir. Mr. Barker, the consul at Aleppo, had brought his little family. On October 7, Bruce, recalled suddenly to England, set out for Aleppo with Beaudin. He was leaving his friend for a long time. What happened at this departure, which was to be without return? And, first, what was he in regard to Lady Hester. Simple travelling companion or lover? The doctor observes on this subject a discretion wholly professional. He remarks that Bruce, during the three years in which he travelled over the East with her, derived much from the fruit of her experience of the world and her conversation. We know nothing in reality. But who knows if Bruce did not think of Lady Hester what Heinrich Heine was to say later of Marie Kalergis: "She is not a woman; she is a monument; she is the cathedral of the god Love." And men do not much care about falling at the feet of cathedrals; they fear the gossip of the idlers, and they have too much difficulty in getting up again afterwards.