Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/325

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Lady Hester Stanhope.
311

Egypt, accompanied them, and remained there until the final evacuation, when he obtained a pension; but of which, he declared, he had never touched a sou, in consequence of residing abroad.

Mons. Urbain, a contributor to the Temps, happening to meet with Pierre when he was travelling in Syria, was so highly diverted with his anecdotes, that, on his return to France, he wrote no less than three feuilletons, or notices on Le Vieux Pierre; at least, so I was informed by Monsieur Guys.

Pierre had been sent for by Lady Hester Stanhope, and she assigned him a room close to the doors of her own quadrangle, that he might be always within call, Pierre was a man exceedingly thin, with an aquiline nose, and a steady eye, full of gasconade to be mistaken for courage, wonderfully loquacious, and deeply imbued with all the mystic doctrines that Lady Hester sometimes preached about. But Pierre's chief merit lay in his star, which, she assured me, was so propitious to her, that it could calm her convulsions, and lay her to sleep, when books, narcotics, and everything else failed.

Glancing in these desultory memorials from one person to another, I may here mention, that one of the maids, named Sâady, incurred the particular aversion of Lady Hester, just as strongly as Pierre was favoured with her partiality. Poor Sâady never