Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/300

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Memoirs of

beyond he would find it. He said he had heard she was dead: I assured him that was not the case, but that she was greatly indisposed. I regretted to myself that I could not ask him in, or enter into conversation with him; but Lady Hester had exacted from me a solemn promise that I never would hold any parley with English travellers, until I had first conferred with her on the subject, and had described them, so that she might obtain the necessary indications to enable her to guess what their business was, or until she had read their letter of introduction, if they bore one. So he quitted me, first asking whether I was an Englishman; to which I answered that I left him to judge. He appeared to be about twenty-one years of age: he had with him for his servant a Ragusan, whom my servant knew, and who, he assured me, was a drunken reprobate. Short as the stop at the gate was, the Ragusan found time to tell the other that he had famous wages: I think it was eight dollars a month. Now I gave mine, who was also a European, four, which was considered good pay, the rate being, in Lady Hester's house, from one to three. Europeans, however, always get more than people of the country, and have more wants to satisfy. How many travellers are obliged, on their landing in these countries, to take fellows into their service without a character, outcasts of society, and who in England