If the following pages are ever to see the light of day it will be because they have been stolen from me. The delay that I exact before they shall be disclosed assures me of that. [1] As to this disclosure, let no one distrust my aim when I prepare for it, when I insist upon it. You may believe me when I maintain that no pride of authorship binds me to these pages. Already I am too far removed from all such things. Only it is useless that others should enter upon the path from which I shall not

Sunday, the sixth of June, 1903, broke the monotony of the life that we were leading at the Post of Hassi-Inifel by two events of unequal importance, the arrival of a letter from Mlle. de C——, and the latest numbers of the Official Journal of the French Republic. "I have the Lieutenant's permission?" said Sergeant Chatelain, beginning to glance through the magazines he had just removed from their wrappings. I acquiesced with a nod, already completely absorbed in reading Mlle. de C——'s letter. "W

A few days sufficed to convince us that Chatelain's fears as to our official relations with the new chief were vain. Often I have thought that by the severity he showed at our first encounter Saint-Avit wished to create a formal barrier, to show us that he knew how to keep his head high in spite of the weight of his heavy past. Certain it is that the day after his arrival, he showed himself in a very different light, even complimenting the Sergeant on the upkeep of the post and the instruction o

"So I killed Captain Morhange," André de Saint-Avit said to me the next day, at the same time, in the same place, with a calm that took no account of the night, the frightful night I had just been through. "Why do I tell you this? I don't know in the least. Because of the desert, perhaps. Are you a man capable of enduring the weight of that confidence, and further, if necessary, of assuming the consequences it may bring? I don't know that, either. The future will decide. For the present there is

"You see," said Captain Morhange to me fifteen days later, "you are much better informed about the ancient routes through the Sahara than you have been willing to let me suppose, since you know of the existence of the two Tadekkas. But the one of which you have just spoken is the Tadekka of Ibn-Batoutah, located by this historian seventy days from Touat, and placed by Schirmer, very plausibly, in the unexplored territory of the Aouelimmiden. This is the Tadekka by which the Sonrhaï caravans pass

With a blow of the tip of his cane Morhange knocked a fragment of rock from the black flank of the mountain. "What is it?" he asked, holding it out to me. "A basaltic peridot," I said. " It can't be very interesting, you barely glanced at it." "It is very interesting, on the contrary. But, for the moment, I admit that I am otherwise preoccupied." "How?" "Look this way a bit," I said, showing towards the west, on the horizon, a black spot across the white plain. It was six o'clock in the morning.

As Eg-Anteouen and Bou-Djema came face to face, I fancied that both the Targa and the Chaamba gave a sudden start which each immediately repressed. It was nothing more than a fleeting impression. Nevertheless, it was enough to make me resolve that as soon as I was alone with our guide, I would question him closely concerning our new companion. The beginning of the day had been wearisome enough. We decided, therefore, to spend the rest of it there, and even to pass the night in the cave, waiting

"It is curious," said Morhange, "to see how our expedition, uneventful since we left Ouargla, is now becoming exciting." He said this after kneeling for a moment in prayer before the painfully dug grave in which we had lain the guide. I do not believe in God. But if anything can influence whatever powers there may be, whether of good or of evil, of light or of darkness, it is the prayer of such a man. For two days we picked our way through a gigantic chaos of black rock in what might have been t

It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes. I thought at once of Morhange. I could not see him, but I heard him, close by, giving little grunts of surprise. I called to him. He ran to me. "Then they didn't tie you up?" I asked. "I beg your pardon. They did. But they did it badly; I managed to get free." "You might have untied me, too," I remarked crossly. "What good would it have done? I should only have waked you up. And I thought that your first word would be to call me. There, that's done."

M. Le Mesge looked at Morhange triumphantly. It was evident that he addressed himself exclusively to Morhange, considering him alone worthy of his confidences. "There have been many, sir," he said, "both French and foreign officers who have been brought here at the caprice of our sovereign, Antinea. You are the first to be honored by my disclosures. But you were the pupil of Berlioux, and I owe so much to the memory of that great man that it seems to me I may do him homage by imparting to one of

We passed through an interminable series of stairs and corridors following M. Le Mesge. "You lose all sense of direction in this labyrinth," I muttered to Morhange. "Worse still, you will lose your head," answered my companion sotto voce . "This old fool is certainly very learned; but God knows what he is driving at. However, he has promised that we are soon to know." M. Le Mesge had stopped before a heavy dark door, all incrusted with strange symbols. Turning the lock with difficulty, he opened

My guide and I passed along another long corridor. My excitement increased. I was impatient for one thing only, to come face to face with that woman, to tell her.... So far as anything else was concerned, I already was done for. I was mistaken in hoping that the adventure would take an heroic turn at once. In real life, these contrasts never are definitely marked out. I should have remembered from many past incidents that the burlesque was regularly mixed with the tragic in my life. We reached a

My fatigue was so great that I lay as if unconscious until the next day. I awoke about three o'clock in the afternoon. I thought at once of the events of the previous day; they seemed amazing. "Let me see," I said to myself. "Let us work this out. I must begin by consulting Morhange." I was ravenously hungry. The gong which Tanit-Zerga had pointed out lay within arm's reach. I struck it. A white Targa appeared. "Show me the way to the library," I ordered. He obeyed. As we wound our way through t

Count Casimir had reached that stage where drunkenness takes on a kind of gravity, of regretfulness. He thought a little, then began his story. I regret that I cannot reproduce more perfectly its archaic flavor. "When the grapes begin to color in Antinea's garden, I shall be sixty-eight. It is very sad, my dear boy, to have sowed all your wild oats. It isn't true that life is always beginning over again. How bitter, to have known the Tuileries in 1860, and to have reached the point where I am no

It was at night that Saint-Avit liked to tell me a little of his enthralling history. He gave it to me in short installments, exact and chronological, never anticipating the episodes of a drama whose tragic outcome I knew already. Not that he wished to obtain more effect that way—I felt that he was far removed from any calculation of that sort! Simply from the extraordinary nervousness into which he was thrown by recalling such memories. One evening, the mail from France had just arrived. The le

" Arraôu, arraôu ." I roused myself vaguely from the half sleep to which I had finally succumbed. I half opened my eyes. Immediately I flattened back. " Arraôu ." Two feet from my face was the muzzle of King Hiram, yellow with a tracery of black. The leopard was helping me to wake up; otherwise he took little interest, for he yawned; his dark red jaws, beautiful gleaming white fangs, opened and closed lazily. At the same moment I heard a burst of laughter. It was little Tanit-Zerga. She was crou

It was this sort of a night when what I am going to tell you now happened. Toward five o'clock the sky clouded over and a sense of the coming storm trembled in the stifling air. I shall always remember it. It was the fifth of January, 1897. King Hiram and Galé lay heavily on the matting of my room. Leaning on my elbows beside Tanit-Zerga in the rock-hewn window, I spied the advance tremors of lightning. One by one they rose, streaking the now total darkness with their bluish stripes. But no burs

I awakened in my room. The sun, already at its zenith, filled the place with unbearable light and heat. The first thing I saw, on opening my eyes, was the shade, ripped down, lying in the middle of the floor. Then, confusedly, the night's events began to come back to me. My head felt stupid and heavy. My mind wandered. My memory seemed blocked. "I went out with the leopard, that is certain. That red mark on my forefinger shows how he strained at the leash. My knees are still dusty. I remember cr

Through the great open window, waves of pale moonlight surged into my room. A slender white figure was standing beside the bed where I lay. "You, Tanit-Zerga!" I murmured. She laid a finger on her lips. "Sh! Yes, it is I." I tried to raise myself up on the bed. A terrible pain seized my shoulder. The events of the afternoon came back to my poor harassed mind. "Oh, little one, if you knew!" "I know," she said. I was weaker than a baby. After the overstrain of the day had come a fit of utter nervo

During the first hour of our flight, the great mehari of Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh carried us at a mad pace. We covered at least five leagues. With fixed eyes, I guided the beast toward the gour which the Targa had pointed out, its ridge becoming higher and higher against the paling sky. The speed caused a little breeze to whistle in our ears. Great tufts of retem , like fleshless skeletons, were tossed to right and left. I heard the voice of Tanit-Zerga whispering: "Stop the camel." At first I did not

At the foot of the valley of the Mia, at the place where the jackal had cried the night Saint-Avit told me he had killed Morhange, another jackal, or perhaps the same one, howled again. Immediately I had a feeling that this night would see the irremediable fulfilled. We were seated that evening, as before, on the poor veranda improvised outside our dining-room. The floor was of plaster, the balustrade of twisted branches; four posts supported a thatched roof. I have already said that from the ve