Memoirs of the Prince of Joinville. Prince of Joinville
whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec and the Desert. We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of jokes there with a witty ship's surgeon named Camescasse, who was one of our party. I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice was specially among the local aristocracy. He always called him "The Avenger of the People."
At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest. Apart from my presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of Boutrouss-Karam's daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to it in their best clothes. Such handsome types, such costumes, such turbans! I was one of the bride's witnesses: she and I had each to keep a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole of the ceremony. The bride shook, and her bracelet fell down. After the ceremony she received me unveiled. She was a fine tall dark girl, but not a pretty woman. From Jaffa I journeyed to Jerusalem, and travelled all through the Holy Land, with a feeling of deep emotion, which was only disturbed by one vexatious incident. On the day I was to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a great crowd had got there before me, and a quarrel, which degenerated into a general melee, forthwith arose between Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. It was only by dint of hard knocks that the Turkish police made way for me to enter the Holy Place,
and to crown the scandal, just as I knelt in deep devotion, before the altar, the organ began to play the Marseillaise. There was yet another episode during my stay at Jerusalem. The Governor of the Province waited upon me to say he had Mehemet Ali's orders to place himself at the disposal of the son of the King of France, and to do whatever he desired. I caught the ball on the hop, and replied he was just in time, for I had just been going to ask his leave to enter the Mosque of Omar, which stands on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. It should be added that this fine mosque, which is next in holiness in Mussulman eyes to that at Mecca, and which is now open to all the world, had at that date never been seen except by the famous traveller Ali Bey.
Governor Hassan Bey tugged his beard when he heard my request, and seemed very much put out indeed. After a moment's silence he made up his mind, and said, "Come to-morrow: I'll take you there myself." The next day I kept my appointment, bringing Bruat and two or three officers who were making the same trip with me. We entered the mosque, which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus. Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This was by no means reassuring, but Hassan Bey was equal to the emergency. Seizing me by the arm, he put me behind him, with Bruat and the other gentlemen grouped round me. Then he ordered a dozen Kavasses he had brought with him to charge, which they did, laying out heavily with their sticks. Not content with that, he had the most turbulent of the Softas seized, thrown down at his feet, and beaten without mercy. The blows hailed down on the poor
wretch as if they had been beating a carpet. This determined attitude cowed the crowd, which fell back to the far end of the mosque, grumbling. "We will go now," said the Bey. Once we were outside, he shut us up in a neighbouring mosque, which was empty, begging us to wait there for him. Soon we heard a great noise and yelling outside. Presently Hassan Bey reappeared smiling, and let us out. The crowd had disappeared, and a battalion of Egyptian infantry had taken its place. Advised by the Bey, we left Jerusalem a day after this scuffle, with much regret on my part. The sight of all the spots which are glorified by the splendid stories of our religious history had impressed me deeply. My imagination had conjured up the very pictures in Royaumont's illustrated Bible, out of which I had learnt both the Old and the New Testament. And just as I was about to start, when I opened the window of the room I occupied in the Latin convent, I saw just in front of me the picture in that same Bible which represents David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman, looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman in the Bible picture: she was hunting it for vermin!
I returned from Jerusalem by the Dead Sea, Nazareth, and Acre.
As we were riding along one night, to escape the heat, not far from Nazareth, we met a troop of horsemen headed by an individual in Egyptian dress, who announced himself as Ibrahim Aga, sent by Soliman Pasha to meet me. Just as I was calling up the dragoman to translate what I had to say to him, Ibrahim Aga said to me in a drawling voice, "Don't give yourself that trouble, it isn't the least necessary. I am the Marquis de Beaufort, captain on the staff." He was in fact one of the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army then lying in
cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks at Homs
and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all over Syria and at Acre. I was soon to see Soliman Pasha—in other words, Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, who had organized them, and under the energetic and iron-willed son of Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had led them to victory. I beheld a little man, whom long residence in Egypt had quite orientalized in appearance but who had preserved all the vivacity of his Gallic wit. The Iphigenie returned to France by Malta, where I made the acquaintance of Lord Brudenell, since celebrated under the name of Lord Cardigan, for his famous Balaclava charge and of Major Rose, a charming fellow, who later became the Sir Hugh Rose of the Crimean War, and after that Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn of the Indian Mutiny. At that moment Major Rose commanded the 42nd Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch," a splendid regiment, especially so then, when it consisted of nothing but veterans of Herculean build. It furnished the Guard of Honour that received me at the Palace of the Grand Masters when I went to pay my respects to the governor, and the salute of that splendid body of men in full-dress uniform and feathered bonnets, with their colours lowered to the ground, their band playing God save the Queen, and their bagpipes shrieking under the arches of the palace, was a most striking sight. That was the first time I heard the bagpipes of the Highland regiments. I have often heard them since, and they always remind me of that wonderfully dramatic incident in the great Indian Mutiny, the relief of Lucknow. In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called the Residency. Isolated in the heart of India, besieged for months on end, without any outside news, starving, decimated by sickness and the enemy's fire, women and soldiers alike, with true British pluck, and having lost all hope of
succour, had no thought but to sell their lives as dearly as
possible. All at once the noise of the daily cannonade and the rifle fire seem to be doubled, and unaccustomed shouts are heard, like the national "hurrah." The cheering seems to get nearer, but the Sepoys have so often cheered derisively! Suddenly another sound strikes on the ear of the besieged. The bagpipes! The bagpipes! And soon they make out the famous Highland march, The Campbells are coming! Reinforcements they were, collected from all quarters, English and Scotch, soldiers and sailors too, commanded by old Lord Clyde of Balaclava fame. By main force they carried the works the mutineers, tenfold their strength, had thrown up round Lucknow, bringing unhoped-for succour from the mother country, nay, bringing actual salvation with them. A wonderful moment!
I got back to Paris to hear the news of the failure of the first expedition against Constantine, and the brilliant part my brother Nemours had played in that terrible business. I never doubted that signal revenge would soon be taken for the check, and I was in despair that my being a sailor stood in the way of my asking to be allowed to have a share in it.
Meanwhile, I was present at a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass. I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this occasion. After the King