" It did not, however, occur to them
just then that he was to be their evil genius.

"Call him Ra'shid, with the accent on the first syllable," Burton was
always careful to say when speaking of this fiendish monster, "and
do not confound him with (Haroun al) Rashi'd, accent on the second
syllable--'the orthodox,' the 'treader in the right path.'" [219]

58. Jane Digby el Mezrab.

At an early date Burton formed a friendship with the Algerine hero and
exile Abd el Kadir, a dark, kingly-looking man who always appeared in
snow white and carried superbly-jewelled arms; while Mrs. Burton, who
had a genius for associating herself with undesirable persons, took to
her bosom the notorious and polyandrous Jane Digby el Mezrab. [220] This
lady had been the wife first of Lord Ellenborough, who divorced her,
secondly of Prince Schwartzenberg, and afterwards of about six other
gentlemen. Finally, having used up Europe, she made her way to Syria,
where she married a "dirty little black" [221] Bedawin shaykh. Mrs.
Burton, with her innocent, impulsive, flamboyant mind, not only grappled
Jane Digby with hoops of steel, but stigmatised all the charges against
her as wilful and malicious. Burton, however, mistrusted the lady from
the first. Says Mrs. Burton of her new friend, "She was a most beautiful
woman, though sixty-one, tall, commanding, and queen-like. She was
grande dame jusqu' au bout des doights, as much as if she had just left
the salons of London and Paris, refined in manner, nor did she ever
utter a word you could wish unsaid. She spoke nine languages perfectly,
and could read and write in them. She lived half the year in Damascus
and half with her husband in his Bedawin tents, she like any other
Bedawin woman, but honoured and respected as the queen of her tribe,
wearing one blue garment, her beautiful hair in two long plaits down to
the ground, milking the camels, serving her husband, preparing his food,
sitting on the floor and washing his feet, giving him his coffee; and
while he ate she stood and waited on him: and glorying in it. She looked
splendid in Oriental dress. She was my most intimate friend, and she
dictated to me the whole of her biography." [222] Both ladies were
inveterate smokers, and they, Burton, and Abd el Kadir spent many
evenings on the terrace of the house with their narghilehs. Burton and
his wife never forgot these delightsome causeries. Swiftly, indeed, flew
the happy hours when they