Note 45 — Chapter IX

“A group of Bedouins were disputing respecting the sanity of Lady Hester Stanhope; one party strenuously maintaining that it was impossible a lady so charitable, so munificent, could be otherwise than in full possession of her faculties; their opponents alleging that her assimilating herself to the Virgin Mary, her anticipated entry with our Saviour into Jerusalem, and other vagaries attributed to her, were proofs to the contrary. An old man with a white beard called for silence (a call from the aged amidst the Arabs seldom made in vain.) ‘She is mad,’ said he; and, lowering his voice to a whisper, as if fearing lest such an outrage against established custom should spread beyond his circle, he added, ‘for she puts sugar in her coffee.’”—Travels in Arabia, by Lieutenant Welsted, F.A.S. v. ii. p. 69.