The sun was setting as we entered the enclosure, and we were soon scattered about the outer court, picketing our horses, rubbing down their foaming flanks, and washing out their wounds.  The buildings that constituted the palace were of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only one storey in height:  courts and gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms, halls of audience and ladies’ bowers, were strangely intermingled.  Heavy weeds were growing everywhere among the open portals, and we forced our way with difficulty through a tangle of roses and jasmine to the inner court; here choice flowers once bloomed, and fountains played in marble basins, but now was presented a scene of the most melancholy desolation.  As the watchfire blazed up, its gleam fell upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine, on white, mouldering walls beneath, and dark, waving trees above; while the group of mountaineers who gathered round its light, with their long beards and vivid dresses, completed the strange picture.

The clang of sword and spear resounded through the long galleries; horses neighed among bowers and boudoirs; strange figures hurried to and fro among the colonnades, shouting in Arabic, English, and Italian; the fire crackled, the startled bats flapped their heavy wings, and the growl of distant thunder filled up the pauses in the rough symphony.

Our dinner was spread on the floor in Lady Hester’s favourite apartment; her deathbed was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel, her name our conversation.  Almost before the meal was ended two of our party had dropped asleep over their trenchers from fatigue; the Druses had retired from the haunted precincts to their village; and W-, L-, and I went out into the garden to smoke our pipes by Lady Hester’s lonely tomb.  About midnight we fell asleep upon the ground, wrapped in our capotes, and dreamed of ladies and tombs and prophets till the neighing of our horses announced the dawn.

After a hurried breakfast on fragments of the last night’s repast we strolled out over the extensive gardens.  Here many a broken arbour and trellis, bending under masses of jasmine and honeysuckle, show the care and taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage:  a garden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses run wild, lies in the midst of a grove of myrtle and bay trees.  This was Lady Hester’s favourite resort during her lifetime; and now, within its silent enclosure,

“After life’s fitful fever she sleeps well.”

The hand of ruin has dealt very sparingly with all these interesting relics; the Pasha’s power by day, and the fear of spirits by night, keep off marauders; and though we made free with broken benches and fallen doorposts for fuel, we reverently abstained from displacing anything in the establishment except a few roses, which there was no living thing but bees and nightingales to regret.  It was one of the most striking and interesting spots I ever witnessed:  its silence and beauty, its richness and desolation, lent to it a touching and mysterious character, that suited well the memory of that strange hermit-lady who has made it a place of pilgrimage, even in Palestine. {49}