The pages of the journal she kept during those months are reminiscent of "Kismet" and the "Thousand and One Nights," for where the countess willed to go she went, regardless of whether it was precisely safe to do so or not. And adventures she had in plenty. For while keeping nominally in touch with her European acquaintances on the hill of Sahiye, outside Damascus, she found her chief delight in wandering through the bazaars and the quaint streets of this enchanted city of minarets and in riding on horseback through the surrounding country in the cool of the evening. Once while thus doing she was attacked, as she had been warned she would be, by a couple of robbers, who possessed themselves of all the money she had, but missed her small Browning pistol, which, Bedouin fashion, she carried in her riding boot, and with this she eventually cowed them and made her escape. It was soon made plain to the countess that all her movements were painstakingly reported to the Turkish authorities, though the Vali, or Governor, consistently posed as her friend. She had by no means agreeable experiences, too, owing to the jealousy of certain Syrian families, whose pressing invitations to various ceremonials she had been obliged to decline, while accepting those of others and immensely enjoying the impressive and occasionally screamingly funny rites which she witnessed as their guest. One of these hosts of hers, by the way, was the proud possessor of the only bath in Damascus. More than one attempt was made to lure Countess Molitor to places where it was undoubtedly intended to ill-treat if not actually to make away with her. I will let her tell of one of these plots. "To-day Sitt Trusim brought me a letter addressed in unknown handwriting. Before opening it I asked her who brought it. She tells me that a man delivered it, whom, after questioning him, she found out to be deaf and dumb. I read the letter, which was an invitation from a lady asking me to visit her and her daughters this afternoon. She complained that I had given preference to her friends by visiting them, and said that she would send her man-servant to bring me at 5 o'clock. I don't know why this letter aroused my suspicions. Perhaps on account of the mysterious deaf and dumb messenger.