We commenced by unearthing various meteorological and astronomical
instruments--the thermometers of Baudin, Salleron, Fastre, an aneroid,
a Fortin barometer, chronometers, a sextant, an astronomical spyglass,
a compass glass.... In short, what Duveyrier calls the material that
is simplest and easiest to transport on a camel.
As Saint-Avit handed them to me I arranged them on the only table in
the room.
"Now," he announced to me, "there is nothing more but books. I will
pass them to you. Pile them up in a corner until I can have a
book-shelf made."
For two hours altogether I helped him to heap up a real library. And
what a library! Such as never before a post in the South had seen. All
the texts consecrated, under whatever titles, by antiquity to the
regions of the Sahara were reunited between the four rough-cast walls
of that little room of the bordj. Herodotus and Pliny, naturally, and
likewise Strabo and Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela, and Ammien Marcellin. But
besides these names which reassured my ignorance a little, I perceived
those of Corippus, of Paul Orose, of Eratosthenes, of Photius, of
Diodorus of Sicily, of Solon, of Dion Cassius, of Isidor of Seville,
of Martin de Tyre, of Ethicus, of Athenée, the _Scriptores Historiae
Augustae_, the _Itinerarium Antonini Augusti_, the _Geographi Latini
Minores_ of Riese, the _Geographi Graeci Minores_ of Karl Muller....
Since I have had the occasion to familiarize myself with Agatarchides
of Cos and Artemidorus of Ephesus, but I admit that in this instance
the presence of their dissertations in the saddle bags of a captain of
cavalry caused me some amazement.
I mention further the _Descrittione dell' Africa_ by Leon l'African,
the _Arabian Histories_ of Ibn-Khaldoun, of Al-Iaquob, of El-Bekri, of
Ibn-Batoutah, of Mahommed El-Tounsi.... In the midst of this Babel, I
remember the names of only two volumes of contemporary French
scholars. There were also the laborious theses of Berlioux[3] and of
Schirmer.[4]
[Footnote 3: Doctrina Ptolemaei ab injuria recentiorum vindicata, sive
Nilus Superior et Niger verus, hodiernus Eghiren, ab anitiquis
explorati. Paris, 8vo, 1874, with two maps. (Note by M. Leroux.)]
[Footnote 4: De nomine et genere popularum qui berberi vulgo dicuntur.
Paris, 8vo, 1892. (Note by M. Leroux.)]
While I proceeded to make piles of as similar dimensions as possible I
kept saying to myself:
"To think that I have been believing all this time that in his mission
with Morhange, Saint-Avit was particularly concerned in scientific
observations. Either my memory deceives me strangely or he is riding a
horse of another color. What is sure is that there is nothing for me
in the midst of all this chaos."
He must have read on my face the signs of too apparently expressed
surprise, for he said in a tone in which I divined a tinge of
defiance:
"The choice of these books surprises you a bit?"
"I can't say it surprises me," I replied, "since I don't know the
nature of the work for which you have collected them. In any case I
dare say, without fear of being contradicted, that never before has
officer of the Arabian Office possessed a library in which the
humanities were so, well represented."
He smiled evasively, and that day we pursued the subject no further.
Among Saint-Avit's books I had noticed a voluminous notebook secured
by a strong lock. Several times I surprised him in the act of making
notations in it. When for any reason he was called out of the room he
placed his album carefully in a small cabinet of white wood, provided
by the munificence of the Administration. When he was not writing and
the office did not require his presence, he had the mehari which he
had brought with him saddled, and a few minutes later, from the
terrace of the fortifications, I could see the double silhouette
disappearing with great strides behind a hummock of red earth on the
horizon.
Each time these trips lasted longer. From each he returned in a kind
of exaltation which made me watch him with daily increasing
disquietude during meal hours, the only time we passed quite alone
together.
"Well," I said to myself one day when his remarks had been more
lacking in sequence than usual, "it's no fun being aboard a submarine
when the captain takes opium. What drug can this fellow be taking,
anyway?"
Next day I looked hurriedly through my comrade's drawers. This
inspection, which I believed to be my duty, reassured me momentarily.
"All very good," I thought, "provided he does not carry with him his
capsules and his Pravaz syringe."
I was still in that stage where I could suppose that André's
imagination needed artificial stimulants.
Meticulous observation undeceived me. There was nothing suspicious in
this respect. Moreover, he rarely drank and almost never smoked.
And nevertheless, there was no means of denying the increase of his
disquieting feverishness. He returned from his expeditions each time
with his eyes more brilliant. He was paler, more animated, more
irritable.
One evening he left the post about six o'clock, at the end of the
greatest heat of the day. We waited for him all night. My anxiety was
all the stronger because quite recently caravans had brought tidings
of bands of robbers in the neighborhood of the post.
At dawn he had not returned. He did not come before midday. His camel
collapsed under him, rather than knelt.
He realized that he must excuse himself, but he waited till we were
alone at lunch.
"I am so sorry to have caused you any anxiety. But the dunes were so
beautiful under the moon! I let myself be carried farther and
farther...."
"I have no reproaches to make, dear fellow, you are free, and the
chief here. Only allow me to recall to you certain warnings concerning
the Chaamba brigands, and the misfortunes that might arise from a
Commandant of a post absenting himself too long."
He smiled.
"I don't dislike such evidence of a good memory," he said simply.
He was in excellent, too excellent spirits.
"Don't blame me. I set out for a short ride as usual. Then, the moon
rose. And then, I recognized the country. It is just where, twenty
years ago next November, Flatters followed the way to his destiny in
an exaltation which the certainty of not returning made keener and
more intense."
"Strange state of mind for a chief of an expedition," I murmured.
"Say nothing against Flatters. No man ever loved the desert as he
did ... even to dying of it."
"Palat and Douls, among many others, have loved it as much," I
answered. "But they were alone when they exposed themselves to it.
Responsible only for their own lives, they were free. Flatters, on the
other hand, was responsible for sixty lives. And you cannot deny that
he allowed his whole party to be massacred."
The words were hardly out of my lips before I regretted them, I
thought of Chatelain's story, of the officers' club at Sfax, where
they avoided like the plague any kind of conversation which might lead
their thoughts toward a certain Morhange-Saint-Avit mission.
Happily I observed that my companion was not listening. His brilliant
eyes were far away.
"What was your first garrison?" he asked suddenly.
"Auxonne."
He gave an unnatural laugh.
"Auxonne. Province of the Cote d'Or. District of Dijon. Six thousand
inhabitants. P.L.M. Railway. Drill school and review. The Colonel's
wife receives Thursdays, and the Major's on Saturdays. Leaves every
Sunday,--the first of the month to Paris, the three others to Dijon.
That explains your Judgment of Flatters.
"For my part, my dear fellow, my first garrison was at Boghar. I
arrived there one morning in October, a second lieutenant, aged
twenty, of the First African Batallion, the white chevron on my black
sleeve.... Sun stripe, as the _bagnards_ say in speaking of their
grades. Boghar! Two days before, from the bridge of the steamer, I had
begun to see the shores of Africa. I pity all those who, when they see
those pale cliffs for the first time, do not feel a great leap at
their hearts, at the thought that this land prolongs itself thousands
and thousands of leagues.... I was little more than a child, I had
plenty of money. I was ahead of schedule. I could have stopped three
or four days at Algiers to amuse myself. Instead I took the train that
same evening for Berroughia.
"There, scarcely a hundred kilometers from Algiers, the railway
stopped. Going in a straight line you won't find another until you get
to the Cape. The diligence travels at night on account of the heat.
When we came to the hills I got out and walked beside the carriage,
straining for the sensation, in this new atmosphere, of the kiss of
the outlying desert.
"About midnight, at the Camp of the Zouaves, a humble post on the road
embankment, overlooking a dry valley whence rose the feverish perfume
of oleander, we changed horses. They had there a troop of convicts and
impressed laborers, under escort of riflemen and convoys to the
quarries in the South. In part, rogues in uniform, from the jails of
Algiers and Douara,--without arms, of course; the others
civilians--such civilians! this year's recruits, the young bullies of
the Chapelle and the Goutte-d'Or.
"They left before we did. Then the diligence caught up with them. From
a distance I saw in a pool of moonlight on the yellow road the black
irregular mass of the convoy. Then I heard a weary dirge; the wretches
were singing. One, in a sad and gutteral voice, gave the couplet,
which trailed dismally through the depths of the blue ravines:
"'_Maintenant qu'elle est grande,
Elle fait le trottoir,
Avec ceux de la bande
A Richard-Lenoir_.'
"And the others took up in chorus the horrible refrain:
"'_A la Bastille, a la Bastille,
On aime bien, on aime bien
Nini Peau d'Chien;
Elle est si belle et si gentille
A la Bastille_'
"I saw them all in contrast to myself when the diligence passed them.
They were terrible. Under the hideous searchlight their eyes shone
with a sombre fire in their pale and shaven faces. The burning dust
strangled their raucous voices in their throats. A frightful sadness
took possession of me.
"When the diligence had left this fearful nightmare behind, I regained
my self-control.
"'Further, much further South,' I exclaimed to myself, 'to the places
untouched by this miserable bilgewater of civilization.'
"When I am weary, when I have a moment of anguish and longing to turn
back on the road that I have chosen, I think of the prisoners of
Berroughia, and then I am glad to continue on my way.
"But what a reward, when I am in one of those places where the poor
animals never think of fleeing because they have never seen man, where
the desert stretches out around me so widely that the old world could
crumble, and never a single ripple on the dune, a single cloud in the
white sky come to warn me.
"'It is true,' I murmured. 'I, too, once, in the middle of the desert,
at Tidi-Kelt, I felt that way.'"
Up to that time I had let him enjoy his exaltations without
interruption. I understood too late the error that I had made in
pronouncing that unfortunate sentence.
His mocking nervous laughter began anew.
"Ah! Indeed, at Tidi-Kelt? I beg you, old man, in your own interest,
if you don't want to make an ass of yourself, avoid that species of
reminiscence. Honestly, you make me think of Fromentin, or that poor
Maupassant, who talked of the desert because he had been to Djelfa,
two days' journey from the street of Bab-Azound and the Government
buildings, four days from the Avenue de l'Opera;--and who, because he
saw a poor devil of a camel dying near Bou-Saada, believed himself in
the heart of the desert, on the old route of the caravans....
Tidi-Kelt, the desert!"
"It seems to me, however, that In-Salah--" I said, a little vexed.
"In-Salah? Tidi-Kelt! But, my poor friend, the last time that I passed
that way there were as many old newspapers and empty sardine boxes as
if it had been Sunday in the Wood of Vincennes."
Such a determined, such an evident desire to annoy me made me forget
my reserve.
"Evidently," I replied resentfully, "I have never been to--"