allied herself, and that the threatened attack as well as the
pretended apprehension of an engagement had been contrived for the
mere purpose of testing her courage. The day ended in a great
feast prepared to do honour to the heroine, and from that time her
power over the minds of the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester
related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put
up her yashmak for a moment in order to give me a better idea of
the effect which she produced by suddenly revealing the awfulness
of her countenance.

With respect to her then present mode of life, Lady Hester informed
me, that for her sin she had subjected herself during many years to
severe penance, and that her self-denial had not been without its
reward. "Vain and false," said she, "is all the pretended
knowledge of the Europeans--their doctors will tell you that the
drinking of milk gives yellowness to the complexion; milk is my
only food, and you see if my face be not white." Her abstinence
from food intellectual was carried as far as her physical fasting.
She never, she said, looked upon a book or a newspaper, but trusted
alone to the stars for her sublime knowledge; she usually passed
the nights in communing with these heavenly teachers, and lay at
rest during the daytime. She spoke with great contempt of the
frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and
mentioned in proof of this, that they were not only untaught in
astrology, but were unacquainted with the common and every-day
phenomena produced by magic art. She spoke as if she would make me
understand that all sorcerous spells were completely at her
command, but that the exercise of such powers would be derogatory
to her high rank in the heavenly kingdom. She said that the spell
by which the face of an absent person is thrown upon a mirror was